As you have noticed, even if this particular story focuses more on Humans and Infected, the world of Bonfire consists of three main “races”. Humans, Infected and Mutants.

Humans: Good old Homo Sapiens, although due to extreme circumstances, many of them have taken to very invasive body-modification. The Empire was able to maintain a fair amount of technology from before the fall of civilization, but further development is quite hampered by the constant Menace of the Infected.

In its early days, the Empire was able to maintain communication with other states controlled by humans to the east, but over time, all underwater cables were cut and the Empire had no interest in even trying to reestablish them, so t took a more and more isolationist stance. Airborne transport is unavailable, so the preferred method of transportation of goods and people are railways.

Its official religion is the Holy Flame, a monotheistic belief that emphasizes purity of being and actions, as well as self-sacrifice. It preaches that all of the human spirit comes from the flame and in death returns to it, therefore the overwhelming majority of people are cremated when they die. The cleansing fire is a popular motif in the whole of the Empire.

Infected: Their appearance was the primary factor contributing to the fall of human civilization, but unfortunately not much is known about them. They are very aggressive and attack any humans, strangely enough they leave animals and some Mutants alone, but do attack any Mutant that is part-human.

That they act within a sort of hivemind is common knowledge, but few people would believe that they are directed by any kind of intelligent will. Although people have come up with different kinds of Infected such as Leapers, this is mostly based around their general behavior, as different kinds of Infected don't differ much from each other in terms of appearance. Although some people speak of the occasional monstrosity that looks like the fusion of the flesh from many different Infected.

Most of the Infected seem to be found within the borders of the Empire, outside its cities and in the lands to the west of the Empire, the Lost Lands, so called because they are overwhelmed by the Infected. A regular can function even after losing its limbs as long as its head is intact, strangely as well, despite their seemingly ravenous hunger for human flesh, they do not need to eat anything and have seemingly infinite lifespans.

Mutants: There are four kinds of Mutants: Those who were originally human and kept their intelligence, those who were originally animals and became more like humans, those who were humans and lost their ability to reason and animals who continued having the mind of animals after changing. They are a very diverse people in multiple meanings.

Although they like to talk about freedom and choices, most of the Wildlands are ruled by force more than consensus, with very few exceptions most of the Wildlands fall within the influence of one of the Five Great Nobles, Prelestia being one of them.

Mutants become as such from the influence the Pools of Reorigination, huge bodies of a strange substance, catastrophes caused during the fall of human civilization. In the Continent, there are three such Pools, two in the Wildlands and one in the Lost Lands. Although they don't have a universal religion, most intelligent Mutants consider these Pools to be holy.

Apart from that, I would really love to hear about which characters are your favorites! (It won't save or resurrect anyone if the story demand that they be killed.)