Long ago, to live in Yerneth was to know peace and prosperity, for knowledge was the highest value of its people, and generation after generation devoted itself to studying the world around them. Their discoveries accumulated decade after decade, and in time the city founded Altar Corp, an institution dedicated to gathering that knowledge and shaping it for the good of Yerneth. Through the work of its scientists and engineers the city grew self-sufficient on the power of a single hydroelectric station, while its medical research reached heights no one had once thought possible, and for a long time progress seemed unstoppable, right up until the day everything changed.
In their effort to push knowledge past its limits, the scientists of Altar Corp had come to rely on a single creation, a living subject engineered to serve as patient zero across countless experiments, and from that one origin trial after trial was conducted, some of them promising and others never fully understood. Among these was a project meant to cure blindness, but the results were not what the researchers had hoped for, because instead of restoring sight the experiments gave rise to an entirely new kind of creature, beings later named the Lowkihs who were born from failure, unable to see and yet changed in some way no one could quite name.
At first the side effects seemed trivial, minor irregularities that were easily dismissed, but before long the Lowkihs began to react violently to the treatments, their behavior turning unstable as their bodies reshaped themselves and their strength swelled far past any natural limit. From there the situation escalated quickly, and although Altar Corp was ordered into lockdown to keep the creatures from reaching the city, it was already too late, for with their unnatural strength the Lowkihs tore through containment and spread chaos across Yerneth.
Cruelly, the same experiments that had stolen their sight had sharpened everything else, so that sound became both their anchor and their torment, and the endless clamor of the living city drove them into an uncontrollable frenzy until at last they withdrew, drawn back to the abandoned Altar Corp facility by the low, constant hum of its generators, a mechanical resonance that seemed to calm them as though it stood in for what had been taken. The threat remained even so, and fearing total collapse the authorities sealed the facility from the outside and ordered the whole of Yerneth evacuated.
A century has passed since the Yerneth Incident, and beyond its borders other cities endured, though little is known of them except that they have watched and waited and refused to forget, seeing in Yerneth an open wound in their history that they fully intend to close. Today the abandoned city is held together by an unlikely alliance. The Gonraths are its makers, the ones who compose the music and keep the old hydroelectric station and its web of speakers alive, so that neither the current nor the sound ever stops flowing through the ruins. The Zenyths carry that work out into the city, moving from place to place to play the Gonraths' tracks and keep the Lowkihs calm, having long since stopped seeing the creatures as enemies and come to treat them instead as something to be soothed. Working beside them are the Velkihs, a branch of the creatures themselves who took to the sound rather than fleeing it, and who now handle the mixing and raise the stages and rigs from which the music is played. Together they remain far fewer in number than the inhabitants who once filled Yerneth.
Against all odds a strange new harmony has settled over Yerneth, but beyond its silent borders the waiting has finally ended, and the outside world has resolved to reach back into the city at last, sending a woman named Leyla inside under a mission whose true purpose she has not been told. She carries a reason of her own as well, a brother who never left Yerneth and remains somewhere within the walls the world abandoned, and what she uncovers there will decide whether the city's fragile peace survives or falls for the last time.
The first creature engineered by Altar Corp, created so its research could advance without testing on real humans. Every mutation and evolutionary branch that followed — the Lowkihs and everything born from them can be traced back to this single living subject.
The failed outcome of Altar Corp's attempts to cure blindness. The Lowkihs lost their sight entirely, but in exchange their hearing became extraordinary. After years sealed inside the Altar Corp tower with nothing but the low, constant hum of the power station and the distant pulse of the outside music clubs, they came to depend on low-frequency sound, sinking into a kind of flow state whenever it surrounds them. Anything that breaks that flow can throw them into sudden violence. They love to leave the tower and roam Yerneth at night, when the clubs come alive.
Zenyths are another result of the failed Lowkih experiments, though these ones emerged intelligent and highly capable. They spend most of their time learning and experimenting, but their true calling is to act as DJs for the feral Lowkihs across Yerneth, playing the sound that keeps them calm and out of harm's way. Deeply peaceful by nature, the Zenyths have made watching over the Lowkihs their purpose.
Gonraths aren't quite failed Lowkihs, they went through the experiments and mutated instead, keeping faint sight while gaining exceptional hearing. They resemble the Lowkihs, but their horns set them apart, absorbing sound and basslines through a highly advanced form of echolocation. That gift has made them master sound-engineers, able to shape audio into exactly what the Lowkihs need. They can be found all through the Altar Corp building and across Yerneth, working constantly to keep the Lowkihs controlled and calm.
Velkihs are the branch that kept its mind but embraced the noise. Born of the same experiments, they gravitated toward the undergrounds of Yerneth and built a culture of raw, high-BPM sound around them. They work hand in hand with the Zenyths on the technical side of the craft, handling the mixing and raising the stages and rigs from which the music is played. Where the Zenyths soothe, the Velkihs push the sound harder and louder.
Leyla joined the Revenants at nineteen, a mercenary outfit where she learned to fight, handle weapons, and keep her composure under pressure. She grew up in a rough, low-income district scarred by crime, leaning on her older brother, who looked after her and taught her how to survive. He was the one who first told her about the Lowkihs (the creatures said to wander Yerneth) and about the contract the Revenants had been offered to go in and put an end to them. The payout was enough to finally leave the district they had both grown up in.
Big thank you to rubyraygun for helping writing the Altar lore.