"Folks look at you funny when you accuse your neighbor of being a synth. Then one day she blinks wrong, and there’s a gun in her arm and your cousin’s walking around with white blood and a glassy stare. I tell you true: something’s crawling under our skin, and I don’t know whose hand is pulling the strings."

— Sheriff Daren Osk, New Pavacho

Strangers in Familiar Skins

The Pavachean Synthetics are an emerging terror of New Pavacho: artificial humans walking unnoticed among the towns. At first glance they are indistinguishable from the locals, with skin, blood, and features perfectly matched to Pavachean morphology. Some have even integrated into daily life — ranching, trading, or drifting across the badlands as any settler might. Yet their behavior occasionally falters. A glitch in their speech, a hesitation when asked to breathe deeply, or an uncanny smile has given them away. The disturbing truth comes after: dismantled, their bodies reveal hidden arsenals and predatory tools no ordinary rancher would ever need.

Anatomy of a Nightmare

Synthetics are built on a VrGraphene frame with uncanny agility, able to regenerate damage slowly over time. Their synthskin chassis heals surface cuts and burns, hiding their mechanical innards until stripped bare. Inside, their manipulators reveal layered servos capable of superhuman grappling power, along with a retractable 15mm wristcannon armed with necrotic rounds. Their motivators are equipped with a Momentum Redirection Matrix, granting them a serpentlike speed that makes their movements look almost unreal. Their sensors are excessive for any normal colonist: infrared and ultraviolet vision, echolocation, pheromone detection, even detachable relay chips and radiosnake eyes. Their voices can perfectly mimic anyone, or focus into disorienting sonic beams. And hidden in the throat of some: a Ripsnake, a spear-tongue designed to lance or inject poison at kissing distance.

What unsettles Pavacheans most is not just the design — but the purpose. These constructs lack communications gear. No transceivers, no quantum links. Whoever built them does not monitor them. That suggests either terrifying confidence, or something worse.

The Necromancer’s Kiss

Each Pavachean Synthetic carries six specialized rounds for its wristcannon. These Necromancer rounds are small necrotubes loaded with nanites that, when fired into a body, convert the victim into a shambling Necroid servant. If fired unguided, the body reanimates as a berserker, lashing out until it collapses. If guided by a smartgun link, the risen corpse obeys the shooter with slavish devotion. Pavacheans have found synths whose ammunition was partly spent — and whose “neighbors” or “friends” now serve as grotesque thralls. Whether this was intended design or rogue behavior remains unknown.

Whispers of Purpose

The people of Pavacho argue endlessly over the Synthetics’ origin. Some say they are weapons of House Volkert, sent to destabilize Pavacho with paranoia and undead terror. Others whisper of forgotten Commonwealth experiments, or even alien infiltration. The most unnerving theory is that the synthetics are not “agents” at all — that they are field tests for something still greater. What is certain is that Pavacho’s sheriff and bounty hunters now treat every stranger with suspicion, knowing that the next outlaw duel may end with their opponent shedding skin to reveal steel, and the dead rising around them under a puppet master’s command.