New Horizons Research
New Horizons Research was a small research facility founded in the year 1785 on the Reonan calendar. When the Earthlings invaded Reona in the year 1792, New Horizons developed a group of genetically engineered humans with superior strength, excellent hand-to-hand combat skills, more durable skin, superior speed, and superior agility. They also lack empathy and basic human emotion making them the perfect soldiers. They were all male. The research made them defeat Earthling humans and win the war.
After the war, the Reonan humans and Earthling humans signed a peace treaty and they coexisted. However, the Earthling humans lived on separate colonies from the Reonan humans. The genetically engineered men were introduced into the workforce doing labor for the humans that bought them. Eventually, the genetically engineered men went maverick and turned on both Reonans and Earthlings. They killed every Earthling on Reona and killed some Reonans, as well. The genetically engineered men and the scientists that created them were ordered to be executed. They shot and burned the bodies of the genetically engineered men and hung the scientists.
Come the 20th century in 1918, Dr. Wolfgang Duerr and Dr. Dodd Lancaster discovered old notes left behind in an old ruin. Both scientists brought them back to their lab to study the notes. They were fascinated with such a concept and Dr. Lancaster thought it would be good to revive New Horizons in case of another Earthling invasion or invasion from any other planet.
Dr. Duerr suggested that instead of creating new humans as the notes read, he wanted to enhance humans. The first genetically enhanced test subject was in 1922.
Genetically Engineered Men
Genetically engineered humans are like the aforementioned created in the late 18th century. However, the newer ones were born between the years 1964 to 1975. New Horizons Research undertook pregnant women willing to undergo their experiments. They inserted a device in their womb to engineer the baby. The babies born were all male, but none of the mothers who gave birth to the boys survived the childbirth. This project was a failure because the boys born had inferior intelligence, short attention span, and no interest in combat. The project was shut down in the late 70s. Genetically engineered men have no psionic abilities and nothing beyond superior strength and durability. Their motor and intelligence are significantly poorer than normal human beings. Their lifespans are also shorter, so they usually die between the ages of 21-24. The earliest genetically engineered men had shorter lifespans at 13-years-old is when they eventually drop dead.
Genetically Enhanced Humans
Dr. Duerr had his first genetically enhanced test subject in 1922 and the last recorded test subjects were in 1981. They inject the serum into a human and the serum alters their genetics. This can either kill the test subject or give them special abilities called "ethereal prowess." These special abilities can be super strength, super speed, flight, psionic powers, shapeshifting, etc. One person can have one ethereal prowess each, but there are rare cases when a person can have two at most.
Genetically enhanced people will never age and they are biologically immortal. They cannot die unless they are killed.
Too much of the serum can give a person sharp teeth or turn their eyes silver.
If a person has psionic abilities and they use their powers to the fullest extent, it will overwhelm them and they need rest, reenergizing serum, and/or eating copious amounts of food.
In the year 1964, a bunch of children was sold to a New Horizons Research Facility to undergo serum treatments and extensive training to become super soldiers. The project was shut down in 1974 when a masked man broke in to rescue a child and set the place ablaze.
In the year 1981, New Horizons Research started another project under the guise of a camp located in Rose Lakewood, Garden State. The premise of the camp was for campers to get away and take the pain away. The real premise was to genetically enhance more people. The scientists injected the campers with serum and at the end of the summer of 1981, the camp shut down and vanished without a trace.
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In the following years in 1982 and 1984, they started the same project under the guise of a camp in various locations throughout the US. After the scientists injected the participants with genetic enhancement serum and their treatment finished, they shut down the camps and vanished.
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It's unknown if they still do this to this day but a mysterious man finds and tracks the participants he knew such as Celeste, Deimos, Lazaros, Ivy, Tristan, and a young woman assumed to be patient zero of this project.