Ghouls

Despite the still, Lily could feel eyes on her. Her skin crawled and her hands tightened around the heavy lead pipe - it'd work well enough to ground her, if she could find any electricity. In a pinch, the jagged broken end looked like it would make any potential assailants think twice. A brick tumbled off a crumbling building and Lily swung around to face the noise, weapon raised. A small, dirty face peered at her from behind a tangle of broken masonry, eyes wide as if the kid hadn't seen another person before.

Ghouls live in the most inhospitable places in the modern world, driven there by poverty, desperation, or sinister intent; the Nekropoli. Ranging from condemned factories to entire polluted city blocks or scarred wilderness, Nekropoli are so tainted and poisoned that no one in their right mind would attempt to live there. For Ghouls, it's a home that slowly (sometimes quickly) kills them.
No matter where they come from or where the Nekropoli is, Ghouls are typically smaller, scrawnier, and generally unhealthier than the general population. A poor diet combined to filthy, polluted environments ravage their bodies, and mean any newborn are stricken with any number of ailments before they even have a chance. Due to their lot, alcohol and drug abuse is rampant, further exasperating the issue. Theirs is a hard lot.
But not all suffer. In the lawless reaches of the Nekropoli, there are still places of relative sanctuary. The strong and violent dominate these small groves of life, extorting the other ghouls, ruling over them like small warlords. In other places, criminal organizations move into a Nekropoli to hide their illicit activity in places no law-man will care to look.

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