The year is 2641. The region now known as the Verdant Sea, once part of the equatorial rain belt, was consumed by runaway bio-growth after the Collapse of 2290. Though the maps still mark it as continental land, no satellite has captured a clear image of its surface in over a century. The green haze that blankets it—an ever-churning fog of spores, acidic vapor, and enzymatic pollen—renders the entire stretch impenetrable to drones, satellites, and even reinforced survey craft. Long before modern expeditions attempted to reclaim the surface, the first survivors who fled into the overgrowth spoke of a living world that did not tolerate intruders.

Those early surface scavengers, desperate and unprotected, told stories of vines that moved with purpose, of roots that sensed their footsteps, and of yellow canopy-creatures that hung overhead like swollen lanterns, dripping a warm, corrosive fluid that ate through gear in minutes. Many who ventured into the shallow floodlands at the jungle’s edge never returned; their tracking beacons simply winked out, swallowed by the biomass. The few who staggered back told of bright serpents that wrapped around them with affectionate curiosity, only for their mucus to burn through clothing and skin, and of shapes gliding above the treetops—massive, leaflike entities that drifted silently, hunting not for prey but for warmth, motion, and electricity.

In the decades that followed, as humanity retreated underground, the Verdant Sea grew wilder still. Synthetic probes were dissolved mid-flight by airborne enzymes, and reinforced exo-suits collapsed under the pressure of territorial rootwebs twisting up from beneath the mud. The environment did not distinguish flesh from machine; metal, polymer, and hybrid tissue all decayed the same. Even protogen units—engineered with minimal organic components—were found torn open or overgrown by fungal mats that fed on both circuitry and protein. By the mid-2500s, the region’s reputation as an inhospitable, living labyrinth was firmly sealed. Search teams reported finding half-melted visors fused to tree trunks, and battery packs drained bone-dry by parasitic flora that tapped into them like roots seeking water.

Today, the Verdant Sea remains one of the most hostile biomes on the planet, a place where the line between plant and animal has long since vanished. Its pools glow faintly with the bioluminescent pulses of microbial mats, and its canopies shift as though breathing. Nothing stays dead for long inside its boundaries—everything is broken down, consumed, and absorbed into the endless cycle of growth. Those who study the region say the land is not simply dangerous. They say it is watching.

You are a protogen. You are being sent out with two other protogens. Your objective is to gather supplies and repair seven external radio towers. You are not expected to survive.

You will not be provided with any weapons, only a navigation guide.