Puffy Liberation Front These stealth do gooders and adventurers want to help the escape of all Puffies from Maker Territory to the new underwater colony called Starfish. They've set up the Overground Railroad and often go to the Maker Faire to infilterate other Maker Houses.

When one of them is contacted by a Neural Rabbid, they find there are Puffies out there in the wild that are associated with no Maker. These wild puffies live in tiny colonies by the sea aboveground and seem to be waterproof. What gives?




Crackers Entrepreneurial Puffies called "claw crackers" search for hard rooms and crack them open. Particular prizes are human fabric and Puffies are particularly obsessed with human slippers and children's clothes and jewelry as most the clothes are made for human proportions. Others gather old machines and try to fix them. What is the most amazing object your puffie has gleaned from a hardbox?

Humanists The Humanist puffies are often derisively called "human lovers" and some even consider contacting the humans who live on the Churn Bridges to form an Puffy - Human alliance. However humans have no ideas that Puffies or Makers are living far beneath them and, frankly, considering all the dangers of the Churn in the Overground, it would not be unfeasible that humans would try to overtake Maker fortresses and begin their new civilization underground.

Historians These Puffies live in Starfish want to discover the true history of the Churn and how Makers arrived on Earth. Knowing how the Makers arrived and how they were created could be the key in possibly making a Maker of their own. As they piece together information brought from escapee Puffies and the occasional wild puffy, the historians share their knowledge with the other groups.

Starfish
The puffies that were saved by Mansickler were waterproofed and sent by Mansickler to a safe haven under the sea called Starfish. These Starfish puffies have been adapted by Mansickler to live underwater and they are focused on building a new society. However, Mansickler's own puffies, known as Mansickler's Brood, is mostly missing or iced in the vaults of other Makers.

Wild Puffies in the Overland

When Puffies went above ground to forage for food and hard boxes, a few ran across a lone puffy. These puffies would be alone and immediately run away. But one day a puffy comes out of the wild and claims there are other Puffy communities in the Overground and Underground.

Before he can explain where or how, he falls into a delirium and his pet, a Neural Rabbid, falls mute. There are only 50 known Maker Houses and only 30 of these talk to one another. The other 20 have gone dark and turned off their Rabbids. Could this puffie have been a renegade from one of the unknown 20 houses?

How these wild Puffies survived without getting wiped out by rain is a mystery. Do they have their own colonies or are they genuine lone survivors? Or are they some other creature, generated by the Churn? Makers have experimented with feeding Puffies to the Churn and even ingesting Churn but no Churn has ever produced Puffies or a Maker. But considering that Pets are churn creatures, Makers remain hopeful.

Exodus Puffies, while trying to find their way to Starfish, sometimes vanish and it is hoped that they found their way to a Wild Puffy colony, if such a thing exists.

Resurrectors

These puffies feel that finding Mansickler's Phoenix is important for the long standing benefit of Puffies and that the key to finding the Phoenix lies in rescuing the Mansickler's original Brood who were 'traded' and then iced by other Makers.

Separists feel like Mansickler's Phoenix could pose a danger as it has none of Mansickler's memories and could enslave them just as easily as help them.

The fact that he sacrificed his Brood for them also makes some of them uneasy about his true motives.



Seers

Some Puffies have such poor eyesight they need help to get along. But these Seer Puffies have second sight!

Seers can see the threads into the future.

It's more probability than certainty but they have helped many other Puffies escape by looking into the best way.

Seers and Crackers are highly venerated

in the Puffy community.

It is a Seer who recognizes the first Neural Rabbid in the wilderness and invites them to speak.

Mansickler's Brood in deep freeze

Mansickler's brood, while technically Puffies, were designed by Mansickler before his death to entice other Makers to buy his Puffies and take it back to their residence.

They were rare and beautiful and very unusual looking for puffies.

In a sense, they were a Trojan Horse.

But what was all this for? Mansickler never explained but said that his Brood were preparing the way.

Unfortunately, when he was assassinated at the Maker Faire, his brood were all

iced by various Makers. So while the puffies at this fortress made their escape to Starfish, his own brood were trapped at the various Houses.

NEW SPECIES

1) Makers

Only 30 Makers are in communication with each other. The other 20 are silent and possibly extinct.

2) Puffies

Puffies are created and healed by Makers but are planning to escape to found their own independant society.

3) Churn Pets

These are animals that live above ground (the Overground) and their origins are mysterious. The Churn either transmuted or created them. All that is known is that they can replicate pets easily but not Puffies or Makers.

4) Churns

It is not clear how sentient Churns are. They fight against each other and hybridize and some can be enslaved to form 'copy machines' Bridge humans have enslaved one Churn at the Zoo and several Makers have encased Churns for their own use. Some Makers have tried to eat Churns or feed Puffies to Churns with gruesome results.

1. Churns have a unique ability to sense the presence of other Churns, and can communicate with them through a complex system of vibrations and energy fields. Makers have not yet been able to fully understand or replicate this ability.

2. Churns are able to manipulate their own DNA, allowing them to adapt and evolve quickly to changing environments. This means that even if two Churns of the same species are separated for a long period, they may come back with vastly different abilities.

3. Churns are able to transfer memories and knowledge to other Churns of their species, allowing them to learn and evolve faster than any other known creature. This makes them incredibly difficult to predict and control.

4. Churns possess a form of collective consciousness, meaning that they share a single mind and can make decisions as a group. This makes it almost impossible for a Maker to control a large group of Churns.

5. Churns have the ability to terraform entire continents, reshaping the land and creating new environments. This makes them incredibly powerful, and capable of destroying entire civilizations if left unchecked.

6. Churns have the ability to replicate almost anything, including other Churns, Makers, and even entire buildings and cities. This makes them a formidable threat to any civilization that opposes them.

7. Churns possess a form of energy that is beyond human understanding. This energy is thought to be the source of their power, and it is not yet possible for Makers to harness or replicate it.

8. Churns can travel through time and space, and can exist in multiple dimensions simultaneously. They are able to manipulate time and space, making them almost impossible to track or predict.

9. Churns have a unique form of reproduction, in which they give birth to "seeds" that can grow into new Churns. These seeds can lie dormant for centuries, and can grow into new Churns in a matter of days.

10. Churns are not bound by the laws of physics and have the ability to defy gravity, teleport, and even exist in a state of pure energy. This makes them incredibly difficult to contain or control.

6. Neural Rabbids

Neural Rabbids might be Churn creatures or a very strange form of Puffy. The story is that they were the creation of an extinct Maker but as they are gone there is no way to confirm this. The thing is, every Maker has one and this is the only means by which the various Houses can communicate to one another as it is forbidden, except as an act of war, for one Maker to 'visit' another's fortress. The only neutral Maker ground is the Maker Faire.

While thirty Maker houses come to the Maker Faire and are confirmed to be in existence, the other twenty have gone silent several hundred years ago. Thus Neural Rabbids are normally active for only 30 houses.

The interesting thing is that seers can sometimes hold hands with a Neural Rabbid to 'listen' to Houses that are otherwise silent. One day a seer Puffy sees the Neural Rabbid light up. A message is coming through from a House long thought extinct.

Their Neural Rabbids, silent for over two hundred, are now sending cryptic messages. Could they be the key to understanding how Makers and the Churn arrived on Earth?

Humans
Post Churn, a lot of things have happened to Humans. They've survived, but with very little of their past intact.

1) Boat People

These are descendants of the survivors of the first Churn who managed to get on large cruise ships. To keep safe from Churn, they remain far from shore and have created small trading communities although some communities are pirate predators. They still have and use a lot of pre Churn technology. Some boat people chose to set up a community on land called the Zoo to reestablish human civilization and technology and fight the Churn.

2) The Zoo

The only human scientific enclave gathered to live on the edge of a huge Churn generated Bridge. They gather and examine special human beings who are called "Attractors" and "Detractors" depending on how they affect Churns.

They have also captured a churn called Charybdis which they use to generate things for themselves. Although they live on the edge of the Bridge, they are entirely isolated from the rest of the Bridge People. Their ancestors are Boat people, not Bridge.

3) Bridge People

These are descendants of the survivors of the first Churn. They have very little technology and live on Bridges out of reach of living Churn. Many have no idea of the civilization on Earth before Churn as there is almost nothing preserved except in the 'bubbles' of Churn Lava called "Hard Boxes". All Species scavenge for "Hard boxes" as they often contain perfectly preserved treasures and sometimes even pre Churn humans or animals.

4) Wakers

Like Pompeiian Lava, the Churn overwhelmed entire cities at a time, grinding up or encasing objects or even humans in bubbles called Hard boxes. A hundred years later, Cracker puffies would go to the Upside to look for these rare Hard Boxes. The Hardrooms keep certain humans alive, in a state of sleep. Sometimes, they'd find a strange creature sleeping in the hard box, still alive but clearly not human.

When the hard room is broken, they 'wake'. Sometimes the waking takes weeks.

But very few of the wakers wake in the same state they fell asleep in. These wakers are welcomed in some Bridge communities because they have precious pre Churn knowledge. But some are not welcome: during their long sleep, their bodies have undergone immense mutations. The mutated wakers are called O-Heads. It is not known why some Wakers are mutated and others are not.

5) O-Heads

When some humans wake in the Hard Room, they have holes in their heads. These humans are called O Heads and are often driven away from any Bridge communities so they have their own communities. Unlike humans or Puffies, O-Heads tend to be indestructible and seemingly cannot die.