BACKSTORY

THE BEGINNING

It is midway through the 22nd century and Earth was hit with a large solar flare, ravishing the surface with fire and destruction. Well-off cities were enclosed into domes to provide a safe and sheltered way of life for the lucky ones, while everyone else lived in the wastelands, fighting for their survival while beseiged by bandits, warlords, and other hostile forces. There are not only humans, but alien inhabitants on the planet as well as a group known as "mixers" who have mysterious origins, strange abilites or apperances and are generally looked on with distrust by other citizens. Riley was one of the lucky ones, having grown up in the domed city of London. He had prudent and modest parents, was encouraged to do well at school, and was able to enjoy books, school clubs and tasty food. A good student, he studied finance and secured an internship during his studies which lead into a full time job at a relatively large company straight after graduation. Everything seemed nice and friendly at first, though he began to notice small things, like not quite following company policy or handling projects or clients in ways didn't seem completely professional. It even seemed they were getting a little creative with their books. Every time he questioned the way they were doing things, it was dismissed or explained with some ambiguous, convoluted answer or assured that it was normal. Eventually, he stopped questioning, thinking this was just the way things were behind the scenes of a big company. He stuck his head down and began just focusing on working hard and climbing the ranks, hitting goals, perhaps getting competitive. It seemed entering the workforce meant that everyone started to turn on one another for some promotion or pay rise or something. Sometimes he felt like he was losing his purpose a bit, but he kept going, because that was just the way things were supposed to be.
His qualms resurfaced however upon uncovering actual evidence of illegal activities and connections with the big pharma Serene Inc, the huge company with a lot of control in society. First, it was just things about his manager, and then as he investigated further, he uncovered more concerning things involving the whole company, but he wasn't as secretive as he thought he was being. His manager found out and sent a few hitmen to go quietly get rid of him. Concidentally, the night the hitmen were following him, Riley saw a meteor fall from the sky and went to investigate it where it had crashed. As he arrived at the space rock, the hitmen appeared and attempted their assassination, but in the skirmish, someone bumped the rock and it suddenly exploded, killing everyone there except for Riley who was partly shielded by the body of the man in front of him. He was alive but lost both arms and had deep injuries across his chests and other places. The blood loss made sure he couldn't remember much after that. Scientists had been monitoring the rock and were aware that it had fallen, so they seen arrived at the scene, found Riley and took him to some sort of secret laboratory of theirs. He doesn't know where. But it couldn't have been official, as they were experimenting on people and he was one of the guinea pigs. He doesn't remember much, being semi-conscious most of the time. There was a lot of pain, despite the anaesthetic he was given, and they had attached something to his arms (or where his arms used to be) - his "prosthetics". He remembers one scientist who seemed "nice", kind of made sure he was doing ok. And then one day Riley just had this weird sudden urge to press his up against his cell wall and he created a escape tunnel out - his first transmutation. Through that, he escaped out into the wastelands and has been largely drifting since then.

REVIVAL OF NEOBEACONS

A new stage began when he was called in by a "business partner" wanting to "discuss a proposal", which took him to Glasgow, a wasteland city, not a domed one. There he met a duckman (the "business partner") and an alen priestess runaway (called Filia) and agreed to restart the Neo Beacons, a group existing long ago which consisted of great heroes who protected the people. Their goal was to help restore peace to ravaged cities and fight bad guys (bandits and warlords). His goal was to eventually get back to understand what was going on with his arms, what those scientists were doing, and what was going underneath the apparent peace and harmony in his domed city. Adventure continues He didn't get along well with Filia at first, still doesn't in fact. But they at least tolerated each other enough to defeat the warlord Screwdriver, liberating the wasteland city of Glasgow from his tyrannical reign and allowing the city to begin to rebuild, starting by forming a new council. The wealthy duckman that had first proposed to them restarting the Neo Beacons gifted them a hover van for them to travel in, fighting tyrants and liberating towns, helping to pull more people into freedom all across the country and around the globe. Riley learnt more about his new powers along the way, finding he could shoot blasts of energy from his hand as well as his ability to transmute objects into different objects. However, each time he used his powers, his "prosthetics" - the rock-like material that composed his arms - appeared to grow up his arm, like it was consuming his limb. On one of their journeys, Riley showed Filia his arms since she is a mechanic of sorts. She recognised it as originating from a rock-like alien species and, confused but curious, suggested he try "talking" to it in his head. And lo and behold it replied, much to his shock. It calls itself Strigrskie and is in the same situation as him. Knows jack shit about what it's doing here. This only adds to the mystery that Riley seeks to uncover and to his annoyance knowing that he has another bubbly talking "companion" to deal with. Strigrskie can communicate with Riley in his head, and unfortunately for Riley, he can't "turn off" his voice. Fortunately for Strigrskie, he's quite high-spirited and so he often just bounces back whenever Riley gets annoyed at him. On their travels, Riley has ocassionally found pieces of similar material which Strigrskie reacts to and absorbs, so it seems like one goal they have is find more of these pieces which seem to be parts of Strigrskie's original body.

NEW COMPANIONS

As Filia and Riley (and Strigrskie) travelled around in their hover van, they fought bad guys and started to pick up new companions. First was when they were taking a walk throught the markets and a pickpocket tried to steal Riley's wallet. The chase ended up with Filia throwing her brand new hoodie over the thief, holding her down enough that Riley could catch up and they identified her. A hedgehog alien who called herself Nyco. Through them coming to an understanding, joined them as a new companion. Together, they went to go find out more about the dessert gang known as the Molemen, however, were captured by another group, led by the flamboyant harpy-like alien Jackson - a charismatic guy who quickly showed a violent side. While Filia inadvertently distracted him by trying to convert him to her religion, Riley and Nyco made their escape, making their way to find the molemen and their leader. Everyone ended up at an airport, where a major battle with some molemen occurred and they came out victorious, with a little help from Jackson. At the airport, they found suspicious reports relating to an airplane full of weaponry to be carried somewhere. As they located the plane and approached to investigate, coming close with their hovervan, Nyco surprised them by a betrayal, causing their hovervan to drop while she got herself on the plane using her shadow powers. She then appeared to kill the pilots, take over the plane, and redirect it - towards Russia. That would be their next destination.
During one scuffled where they were fighting molemen, another stranger appeared - literally. He was a teleporter. For reasons Riley still questions to this day, they recruited him into the team. And so they all went in the hovervan to try and chase the plane and the runaway Nyco.