The Mooneyed are the (or maybe one of? who knows) hidden Changed Race of the North American continent, and one of the few nocturnal ones on Earth. They look like tiny humans, a bit under three feet for the tallest ones, with huge and light-sensitive eyes.

When the Fall hit the east coast, they were already holed in... Camp David. The Mooneyed are the descendants of the extended Secret Service protective detail of the President, and the local staff for the residence. Their population is not very numerous, a little over 300 by now, as the local conditions are, shall we say, not very friendly.

The Mooneyed survived the onset of the Fall by establishing a commensal relationship with the similarly Changed dogs that were part of the K9 units of the protective detail. The Changed people lack access to the System, like everyone else on Earth - and beyond - and Talents are so rare, they might as well not exist in such a small population. Instead, they found an interesting solution by relying on the Canids, and they evolved an entire culture of hunter-scouts around the fact that Changed Beasts can accumulate random Talents far more easily than people.

Soon after puberty, the young Mooneyed are paired with newborn Canid pups, to raise them and bond with them. The Changed Canids are larger than most dogs, and for a three-foot humanoid, make perfect mounts. As a rite of passage, each young Mooneyed brings their grown-up friends into the wilds, to one of the few carefully picked valleys that have "the weird" in them. In those mana-heavy places, Canids get soaked by ambient energies and are highly likely to gain Talents, sometimes multiples. Once suitably "awakened", the Mooneyed-Canid pair join the ranks of the Hunters, who patrol the extended surroundings of The Camp ("Camp David"), with the human partner making the best use of his or her mount's Talents to protect their home. This partnership makes them close to having true Talents to survive the dangers of the East Coast "death zone".

The Canids live longer than dogs usually do, but not much more, so after twelve years or so, the pair retire as the canine partner gets too old to patrol. The thirty-ish former Hunter will never partner with another Canid after his mount's death but instead focuses on raising his or her own family, and working at the Camp or one of the rare fields around instead.

The Mooneyed dedicated themselves to preserving The Four Families for more than a century. The President and his wife were far too old to have children and his family never joined them at Camp David, so that obligation ended fairly early after the Fall. But not everyone got Changed when the Changestorms swept over the area surrounding Camp David, and a handful of people stayed baseline human. The more numerous Mooneyed swore to keep them safe anyway, and the environment of the East Coast "death zone" was never cooperating very much with that goal. While the Mooneyed - like most Changed species - can eat some of the mana-heavy food that can be gathered or hunted around Camp David, the humans are more selective and can't digest most food obtained in the area. Experimenting was hard, and a safe food source was usually hard to maintain. Malnutrition was always a thing for the Four Families.

In addition, while the Mooneyed themselves are just numerous enough to be on the safe side, at least in the medium term, of inbreeding, the effective human population ("Four Families", right?) was not sufficient enough for the isolation in which they found themselves. It lasted for four generations until bad luck struck, and an entire generation's gender was too skewed. The only human girl born in two decades had enormous pressure on her at all times. The mounting realization that all she was expected to be was the mother of the entire next generation of humans, the oppressive protection of the Mooneyed for the only fertile female of their Four Families, coupled with the existential dread of being at a dead end pushed the youngster to attempt suicide. While Anna Machian survived thanks to the ministrations of a healing-capable Canid, she succeeded in doing enough irreparable damage that she never conceived until her untimely death in her early thirties.

As we reach the Expedition time, the last of the Four Families took his life five years ago, unable to bear being "the last human". The Mooneyed have been somewhat rudderless since, because their entire purpose for fourteen decades was over, ending in failure. They are still trying to find a sense of their life, in the oppressively deadly zone that is their "natural" environment.

That is, until they cross a mysterious expedition headed toward Washington DC.

Mooneyed STR 14 AGI 17 DEX 15 AUT 14 PER 14 EMP 16

Total: 90 + 1 extra stat