"I got a tip about this guy a few weeks ago… He's on Lathrymite Twitter, posts a lot of videos preaching about the Hethe Ce'dric… About how Ce'dric adores the broken and will break people open to understand their true ways, Ce'dric's teeth are black pulpits and his skin is rot incarnate, about how he will carve out a grave for all and that they should be grateful to be in their graves[...] the kinda shit I'd hear in a Junji fucking Ito novel, not a sermon or homily to the Hethe..."
— Petrel Reverne
Following in the Arkn Mythos tradition, Arkn: Legacy has no shortage of terrors.
WARNING: Spoilers are unmarked
- Over all, Legacy's horrors are that much worse than those of Unity or Arknverse because they're more pedestrian. Eldritch bird-gods and Angelic alien beings who possess and incarnate in our bodies are creepy and unnerving, but (as far as we know) they're squarely in the realm of the fantastic. Legacy's terrors, on the other hand, include slavery, contract killers, depraved charismatic cult leaders, mega corporations that bring about the destruction of countless lives, and amoral scientists who do unspeakable things to human test subjects — all of them on the payroll of their respective governing bodies in one way or another. Very palpable Real Life horrors.
- Andras As'phyxiar is a Dekn surgeon and biologist who conducts horrifying, unethical medical experiments on prisoners of war and civilians alike—including children. He sees nothing wrong with this, because of the progress he's made in the name of medical science (though he does draw the line at experimenting on Dekn).
- Lutin, Andras's lab assistant, was formerly a human prisoner until Andras forcibly transformed him into a Dekn. The procedure itself isn't described (though that arguably makes it worse), but Lutin says that it should be classified as a war crime. What's worse, Andras isn't even certain how he achieved the result, meaning that whatever he did, it was a very scattershot, "throw everything at the wall and see what happens" type of operation. We're also told that Andras has been trying to replicate the results ever since; let that sink in.
- Just the fact that Andras has access to human test subjects in the first place. We're told that the Ythen prohibit the mistreatment of humans, and that SEEKER monitors non-human "visitors" to the Seeds (and vice versa) specifically to prevent it; that leaves several disturbing possibilities: either SEEKER is really slacking in their duties, SEEKER knows about it and doesn't care, or SEEKER knows about it and Andras is paying them off.
- According to Franz Irinith Faust: "The thing about these experiments is that it was built on certain amounts of illegality, and despite the coward’s fondest wishes, the materials for his experiments would always be supplied by grand amounts of illegality." Andras has friends in low places.
- As bad as Andras is, Lucifuge Rofocale, his fellow scientist and partner, is even worse: Andras wants to draw the line at testing on his own people; Lucifuge insists upon it.
- The reason why Lucifuge is working with Andras: a top secret program called The December Project. It's so clandestine that Andras had his college mentor murdered after he found out about it, and had Ryael Morrow abducted and sent to Belial Casimir (and certain death). The aim of the project is, in essence, to create a biological agent that can harm Arkn, Dekn, and humans alike, with 100 percent effectiveness. They succeeded.
- Petrel Raverene's Miran’khai buddies were amongst the test subjects for the project. What happened to them was so horrifying, and exposed so much willful blindness and ignorance, that it made Petrel lose his faith in both the Hethe and humanity in general.
- What does the bioweapon do? We never find out. Its effects aren't described, or so much as hinted at. In "The Council" RPG, Nathali says that when Andras offered Belial Casimir samples of the weapon, he was so horrified by its effects that he flat-out refused to use it and ordered the samples to be destroyed. Belial, a former Dekn general and current Mad Max-style desert warlord, who kills his own men when they fail him, was horrified. It's that bad.
