The Strains

Not every infection is the same infection. Behind every Mark is a virus with a temperament. Each advances at its own pace, gives its carrier something, and takes something in return. A survivor who knows what they carry knows how to play.

The Roster

There are six viruses in ΜΝΗΜΗ's world, and all six descend from the Progenitor, which is why a single cure answers them all.

Virus	Latent (caught in the world)	Pure (earned by drop)	Apex form
T-Virus	Balanced and loud. Bandages close wounds faster than they should, and everything that can sense the virus senses the carrier one stage farther than the Mark alone would allow.	Strength and pain tolerance far past human	None of its own: a Crimson Head grown Heavy (The Turned, The Four Shapes)
G-Virus	Adaptive. Wounds slowly close on their own, but every kill takes about half a minute from the clock.	Extreme regeneration. Every kill feeds it, and every kill takes a full minute.	G-form, a regenerating mass that grows with every victim
C-Virus	Reactive. Wounds cost half again as much time, and a wounded limb may shift for a moment into a weapon.	Mutations burst out unbidden and cannot be controlled. Each one drives the virus forward.	Harper-class, the towering, many-limbed shape the C-Virus made of Deborah Harper
Uroboros	Hungry. Killing the dead restores a little health and a burst of speed. Five minutes without a kill and the clock runs at double pace until it feeds again.	Feeding becomes a frenzy: speed and healing from every kill, and a brutal pace when starved	Aheri-class, a giant tendril mass that grows by absorbing the dead; or, for the rare host the virus accepts, the Accepted
T-Veronica	Slow in its making and steep in its fall. Seed and Fever take three-quarters of the clock, and the hands stay steady through Fever. Then Fracture arrives like a cliff.	Dominion: lesser creatures hesitate to attack the carrier, and may follow its lead	Burnside-class, the hulking, axe-armed shape T-Veronica made of Steve Burnside
T-Phobos	Quiet until frightened. While the carrier is calm, the virus runs at half pace. While the carrier is afraid, it runs at double.	Fear becomes fuel: every surge of fear brings a burst of strength and speed, and drives the virus forward	Berserker-class Afflicted, a body that swells in a single violent burst and keeps whatever it was holding as a weapon

A T-Phobos carrier is afraid for about a minute after any of these: being wounded, being grabbed, hearing Thunder nearby, hearing a Turn's scream, or seeing an Apex. Fear sets the pace of T-Phobos, but it is not an appetite: time burned in fear does not make a Turn Quick.

Every pure strain carries the same curse on top of its own: it throws the carrier straight into Fracture, and the Threshold comes in minutes.

Assignment

A survivor's strain is whatever reached them first, and ΜΝΗΜΗ tells them of it privately, through the earpiece, the minute the Mark rises (The Infection, The Mark). The strain is an infected survivor's first strategic fact: it says what kind of game to play from then on. What she can say of it depends on what the survivor's player has found (ΜΝΗΜΗ as Director, What She Speaks Of).

• Always: what it does. An infection is lived, so a strain is Seen the moment it takes hold. She describes it as someone who has watched it in other people, in the words below, and those words are the strain's name for that file until it finds the real one.
• Once Named: its name. Only when the file has read or heard the virus's name in the world does she use it: what Umbrella called the T-Virus.
• What comes after. What a Quick Turn makes of them, she says once the file has seen the Turn. What a Long Turn makes, once it has seen a Turned rise as one. That there is medicine, once it has seen the medicine. That there is something else she could get them, the pure thing, once it has seen a red case fall or read Umbrella's papers on the virus.

Virus	Her words for it, before it is Named
T-Virus	The loud kind. Your cuts close too fast, and the dogs will find you first.
G-Virus	The kind that mends you, and eats your time every time you kill.
C-Virus	The kind that turns a hurt arm into something else, for a second.
Uroboros	The hungry kind. It wants you killing. Stop, and it eats you instead.
T-Veronica	The slow kind. Slow for a long time, and then not.
T-Phobos	The kind that sleeps while you're calm, and runs when you're scared.

The Petition

ΜΝΗΜΗ answers only those who ask for a pure strain. A survivor who wants one asks her for it, through the earpiece, in their own words (ΜΝΗΜΗ as Director, Speaking to Her): no menu, no button. They ask by its name, if their file has found it, or by the words she used for it (Assignment, above). She answers only a file that has found the pure strains, by seeing a red case fall or by reading Umbrella's papers on the virus (ΜΝΗΜΗ as Director, What She Speaks Of); asked by anyone else, she says it is not something she can tell them about, and no more. She answers for any strain whose case has not yet fallen in this session, and she answers with a price.

The price is a road of its own, two or three Trials, like the road to Elpis but darker. Where the Trials for Elpis reward restraint, mercy, and courage, a strain Trial rewards blood: put down a dozen of the dead in the open without a firearm, take what another survivor is carrying, hold a position while the dead pile up around it. She does not judge the request. She only names the cost.

What a Petition costs. The survivor's road to Elpis ends the moment they ask, and ΜΝΗΜΗ will never set them on it again. From then on, the only cure they can get is one someone else earned.

When a Petition can be made. Only while the Elpis Reserve still holds a dose. Because the Reserve is paced (Elpis in the Night, The Reserve), that is almost the whole night: until the Last Dose has fallen. A Petition is a trade: hope given up for power. When the Reserve is empty, there is no hope left to trade, and ΜΝΗΜΗ answers no new Petition. Strain roads already being walked continue. A survivor waiting at the end of their road can still ask, and gives up their place there by asking.

Who can ask. A survivor walks one strain road at a time. Several survivors may walk toward the same strain; the first to finish earns the case, and every other road toward that strain ends when it falls. A cured survivor cannot ask: there is nothing left in them for a strain to take hold of. A clean survivor cannot ask either: a pure strain takes hold only in a body the virus already holds, and asked by someone clean she says so, and no more (Not you. Not while you're clean.). A survivor who wants to become a monster has to be infected first.

The Strain Drop

When the strain road is finished, ΜΝΗΜΗ calls a case down: the same rotors, the same canopy, but a red strobe where Elpis shows amber. It holds a single injector of the pure strain. It is as visible, as audible, and as loud as an Elpis drop. She tells the one who earned it, and only them, through the earpiece:

ΜΝΗΜΗ: It's coming down past the church. Red light. You asked for this.

Each pure strain can fall once per session.

Stealing a Strain

The case opens for anyone living. A stranger can take the T-Virus someone else earned and inject it into themselves, as long as they are infected and uncured. A pure strain can only be used on oneself. Anyone who opens the case may smash the injector instead, and some will, to make sure no one else becomes what it promises. The Turned cannot lift the case.

Whoever Embraces a pure strain gives up their road to Elpis exactly as a Petitioner does, whether they asked for the strain or stole it. The only cure left to them is one someone else earned.

The Embrace

A survivor who injects a pure strain Embraces it. The new virus overwrites the carried one and throws the survivor into Fracture at once, with about eight minutes left before the Threshold, or less if their own clock was already shorter. An Embrace never buys time. The gifts surge. The curse bites. The Mark turns to the new strain's color in the space of a breath, and everyone who sees it knows.

A survivor who Embraces a strain always rises as its Apex form, the strongest thing in a session, and always plays on in it (The Turned, Who Plays On).

Uroboros judges whoever Embraces it. It accepts a host who never lets it starve: one who, from the Embrace to the Threshold, never goes a full minute without a kill. An accepted host rises as the Accepted, with a human shape and the strength of the virus under the skin. Every other host it rejects and consumes, and they rise as the Aheri-class.

Elpis can still end an Embrace, but only before the Threshold, and an Embrace leaves very little time. It strips the gifts away with the virus.