Protective clothing sheathes his body. A large gorget of yellow-and-black hazard-striped plasteel guards his neck, matching angular black pauldrons surmounting his shoulders. Draped down his back is a shifty cape of silvery reactive fabric, some sort of ultra-tough, camouflaging polymer. It shifts from grey to black and back again in oily swirls, and the fabric is voluminous, stylishly ignoring real-world physics in favour of comic-book physics. His arms and chest are bare, thick green-black scales providing excellent armour in their own right, and his hands are clad in heavy plasteel gauntlets, fingers beautifully articulated, giving him a completely unhindered range of motion. Tiny sensors line the palm and fingers, transferring sensory input directly to the digits beneath.
Pants of heavy black twill protect his legs, reinforced with integrated plasteel armour mouldings where one would expect; a codpiece for his groin, heavy kneepads, and thigh plates. His tail, thick and muscular and alligator-esque, emerges from his back into its own sleeve of twill, which extends about halfway down the tail's length. Left foot is protected by a heavy, thick-soled plasteel boot, the shin-guard-like front striped with black and yellow diagonals. A metallic silver biohazard trefoil is painted on the rounded toecap, and over it is painted a red strikethrough-circle. His right leg is.. missing.. from the knee down, replaced by a skeletal alloy prosthesis, and he walks with a pronounced limp.
Horrorclash's Downwarp is an ugly, brutish place, balancing precariously on the razor edge between a squalorous scarcity environment and the grungy not-quite utopia of the post-scarcity Mess, but the weight of the decaying factory-planet tilts heavily toward scarcity. For in Horrorclash's day, 'Downwarp' is not yet a part of the Mess. It is an aged arcology, an entire planet devoted to production; its surface is studded with miles-high, acres-huge factories, office complexes and lavish upper-class homes, but beneath the industrious surface, the planet's core has been hollowed away to nothing -- a resourceless Dyson-sphere.
Within the hollow sphere, the planet's vital core is replaced by teeming, destitute tenements, overflowing with the wretches who man those enormous surface factories. Enormous holes in the fragile supportive crust allow vile polluted air to roil through the protected underworld in huge toxin storms. Surface technology offers some protection from these storms, but below, the poisoned atmosphere wreaks havoc; everything, including the residents, are in a constant state of disrepair. Corruption is everywhere, physical, mental, emotional. The class war is all that remains after industry has gutted the planet itself.
And to further destabilize this already-precarious situation, all the toxins and pollutants and industrial waste have created another terrifying menace to both surface- and undercolony-dwellers alike. A sticky, tenacious, silver substance that infects everything it touches. Buildings, beings, software, hardware, water, food, air. No-one can name it, except to call it.. Strange.
Deep down in the undercolonies is a place called Lyrikel. This tiny pocket of civilization is home to the Clash Hybrid Enclave, its members devoted to their generations-old tradition of serving as police on the numerous private police forces run by various planetary manufacturing collectives. They are among the more fortunate undercolonists, having access to a single instantiator and a collection of ramshackle anti-scarcity technology, stolen from the surface. The Lyrikellan are strong, honour-bound, and driven to protect.
Who better to rise up and beat back the Strange menace? Armed with gargantuan napalm cannons, their rebreathers loaded with aerosolized antisense and antifear drugs, the Lyrikellan issue forth in threes and fours from their subterranean stronghold, bound to each other by a loyalty stronger than brotherhood. Soldiers against Strange, bearing tanks of purifying fire.
Horrorclash was among the most brave. Leading a tiny band of Strangesoldiers, a unit named 'Eisenherz' by those who remained in Lyrikel to support the fighting hybrids, Horrorclash ventured into the most infected area known in an attempt to excise the cancer. Xodon Tower. The attempt proved a failure. Six valuable soldiers were lost, two injured almost beyond repair, and Horrorclash himself was absorbed by an enormous Strangebeast calling itself Aslaugh'h'ha.
Here his memory fails him. Scraps of lucidity stand out amidst pain. His leg, gone. Cut off to stop the spread of infection. An angel? A saviour. Searing agony. Prosthesis. Limping, indebted, confused.
New to the Mess.
How long was he gone?