Out of the wreckage of the Black Lake Incident, the burnt ruins of Old Europa, with its colossal AI Cores the size of skyscrapers melted down into vast fields of hardened scoria, we saw the NEO-Budapest Triangle rise. High into the firmament, it went, fed by violence and corruption and warring factions. A megalopolis built on the failure of humanity to find a better way, a brighter light.

As far as the city rose into the sky, as high reaching as the old aristocrats, politicians, war mongers and gang leaders built to escape the remnants of the old world, there always had to be someone at the bottom. For every predator, there must always be prey.

The tragedy of Old Europa is not that the hope of an AI-led existence failed, but that the humanity of people broke. That compassion and empathy and benevolence died. So, as those with the power continued to build, as those with the weapons and the old money and governmental ties pushed away from the surface, they made those they had forced to build to live burrowed beneath the hardened earth.

Most of NEO-Budapest’s population live down on the scoria of Old Europa, or underneath it. They have excavated vast tunnel networks that run between the ruined cities. They dig and burrow, living in the dark, stripping away any resources they find that the Acid Code didn’t eat up when it melted everything down into cold, hard slag.

In these dark tunnels, the Lizard Gang rule. Made up of those that found their home in the underworld proper, they are the biggest gang in the Triangle, their numbers reaching into the hundreds of thousands, potentially millions. They are like a government in themselves; they control the tunnels, and only they know how deep they go.

You can tell a true Lizard Gang member by their changed eyes – bio-mechanical implants used to help them see in the depths of the old world. They creep in the dark, searching out the remnants of what once existed, close ties with all Factions. They see no need to gather an army and take the surface, because they have their own kingdom underground.