Board Thread:Lores/@comment-29781728-20170130034152

daily half-assed lore before i go to bed

The fact that elementals exist in the first place is a troubling matter. Of course, when the outbreak occurred scientific reasoning went out the window. It's hard to find a reasonable explanation for explosions caused by throwing clubs, and being able to fire and latch a somehow elongated tongue around survivors.

The explosions were eventually explained by an extremely high amount of kinetic energy, and the tongue thing was explained by an extremely large amount of mutated tongue growth that caused massive decay of the mouth.

However, elementals are just simply strange. It's impossible for the human body to withstand fire for a long period of time without simply falling apart, so Elementals are a puzzle. In the first few months of the apocalypse, hundreds of survivors had to watch their allies scream in pain as they burnt to death, becoming another one of the corpses that lay on the street, unable to be used by the SANI bacteria, and just left there as a symbol of just how horrible the apocalypse was.

After the mass-production of fire extinguishers and fireproof clothing, however, Elementals became just a minor annoyance to most. This made researching them much safer. What a large group of researchers found was reasonable, but still disturbing, to say the least.

A relatively low amount of corpses that are basically intact are the first step of creating an Elemental. First, the SANI bacteria takes over the body and begins to reproduce, eventually creating a thin coating of bactera covering the entire body. The brain is stimulated, and the body walks to a source of heat, usually one of the many fires burning in the cities.

Slowly but surely, the bacteria begins its exposure to heat, slowly adapting and mutating to become immune to fire, and instead just regrow or remain intact. The coating of bacteria over the body becomes much thicker, having about two layers, making the body now fireproof.

Finally, the body is controlled and walked straight into the fire, setting the coating of bacteria on fire. The outer coating of bacteria glows brightly, while the inside layer protects the body. Bacteria that die out are quickly replaced and set on fire by the surrounding bacteria, allowing an Elemental to sustain itself for a long period of time. During this stage, the Elemental can now also pull its body in and then explode outwards, causing a burst of heat that causes an immediate explosion in a small radius, along with gaining its signature ability to set survivors on fire.

Fire extinguishers quickly snuff a Elemental out, because putting the Elemental's fire out basically results in shock, killing off most of the bacteria, and resulting in death of the Elemental.

One thing is quite frightening about all this, however. Due to how the SANI virus works, mutation is extremely quick, and adaptation is a process that occurs within days. With the abundance of fire-vests, the intelligent SANI may realize that it has to change something up. Certain veterans speak of long gone Elementals that could change their abilities at will. Able to change their genetic makeup and look within seconds.

Survivors will not be prepared for what is to come. 