Warning! I got carried away writing this and it ended up a LOT longer than I intended, sorry about that.

Hidden in an underground facility on an unassuming island, an infiltrator plans to break out a pair of unfortunate test subjects.
Unfortunately for this plan however, another group has infiltrated the island, and they have plans of their own.

Yeah this one really got away from me, ngl.
Sorry for the length, I just sorta kept adding stuff in a horrific display of feature creep, so to apologize for that, have a...




LORE BYTE!
The Mechanist Order:
With its roots stretching back to the original founding of the Outbreak Initiative (the precursor to the modern day Clear Skies Initiative), there are few secret societies in the whole of The World Within that can claim to be as ancient as The Mechanist Order, though this is not a fact they like to celebrate.
Originally founded by an enigmatic figure known only as ‘The Mechanist’, The Mechanist Order may have advanced significantly in technological level since its founding, but since that day, it has always been a group of technophilic human supremacists who revere technology in an almost religious fashion.
Taking the original mission of The Outbreak Initiative ‘to escape the womb of The World Mother, and to reject all changes provided by this warped reality, be they magic, vore or non-human species’, to its extreme, the faithful of the Order pursue technological advancement voraciously, and punish any they believe to transgress this original mission with extreme prejudice.
Because of this, they have long been rivals of the similarly radical (albeit in the opposite direction) Outbreak-By-Any-Means Initiative, who seek to make use of any tool available to them in the pursuit of escaping The World Mothers womb.
Although, much like OBAM, The Initiative happy to trade with the Order for new technologies and breakthroughs, behind closed doors of course, and will often have its intelligence department run interference between the two societies, as both are capable of providing valuable materials in their eternal quest to escape The World Within.
Of the many esteemed figures in The Initiatives history who have been secret members of the order, none are more interesting, or more mysterious, than the societies namesake himself, ‘The Mechanist’, all records of the man describe him as being cloaked beneath a veil of cogs and machinery, even during his earliest mentions as a founder of The Initiative, he was described as hiding his features behind a polished steel mask and a cloak made of interlocking brass plates.
The most interesting thing about this man however, is that no official record of his death exists, indeed, he appears by all account to be very much alive and well, this has of course sparked many theories amongst The World Within’s various intelligence communities, ranging from ‘his name being a title’ to ‘he somehow created an elixir of youth using entirely scientific methods’ and even ‘he is secretly a pagan god, manipulating one of The World Within’s oldest factions for his own designs’ though which answer, if any, are true, still has yet to be determined.
Perhaps because of his clothing choice, the Order have chosen to adopt a cogwheel as their symbol, representing their relentless pursuit of progress and a means to escape.
Perhaps the most deadly weapon in The Mechanist Order’s arsenal is not a machine however, but a man, if that word even applies to him that it, standing at just under 8 feet tall without his armour, and with a profile more closely resembling a brick wall than a mans, the being known only as Frateris-α is a legend in The Initiative lands.
He is a walking weapon that has often been compared to a one man army, and his feats are so numerous and incredible that they would require a lot more space than I am allocating to a mere segment of a lore-byte, perhaps he will receive one of his own one day.

Tl;dr, they’re the Martian Mechanicum from Warhammer 40K, crossed with the Mechanist Order from Thief 2: The Metal Age, with a dash of The Enclave from Fallout 2 thrown in for good measure.

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