Dragons of June 6/x:
It all started a long time ago in a bar…
The Fall of Salvation Tower in 300 SD and the formation of the Cannibal Sectors from its ruins changed the face of Mort forever. The chaotic years which followed marked a first high tide for gangs and soft companies, serial killers, props and other criminals, who came to effectively control large swathes of the city as it fought for its survival.
The Heartbeat Dragons were one of the many groups angling for a slice of the rotting cake, a local gang founded in a seedy cellar bar called Heartbeat in what would become Lower Downtown. They were quickly uprooted from their original territory by other larger bands. However, the surviving members of the Dragons refused to just slink away and instead waged a full scale campaign of guerilla warfare against their enemies from the bordering ruins. Their tag “HBD” became dreaded as a sign marking no-go areas for their once so confident opposition.
Both the Dragons and their enemies were destroyed in the course of the brutal roll back operations SLA Industries finally commenced on to clear up the aftermath of the catastrophe of 300 SD. None of the exterminated organisations was worth so much as a footnote in the official mission reports.
Downtown, however, has its own ways of preserving memories. Noone remembers who or what the Dragons were and not even the names of their enemies remain, but the old warning letters “HBD” and their mystical meaning of “Here Be Dragons” became stuck in Downtown’s collective memory. Here Be Dragons even found its way onto annotated sector maps and slowly the old fears it signified of booby traps and explosive devices began to transform into a formless, primordial fear. The fear of monsters.
After centuries, things begin to stir in black cocoons beyond the superstitiously maintained HBD tags.
Mature dragons are cryptids (see The Dream, pages 18-19) with maximum stats.