"Know your enemy" was the wrong phrase from the start. This taxonomy exists so a case worker can look at a file and know, in under five seconds, what they're about to sit across from — not so anyone can decide who counts.
◍ classification tiers
| class | designation | description |
|---|---|---|
| I | Latent | Marrow present in tissue but inactive. Detectable only by scan. Many Latents live full lives undetected and are never told. |
| II | Threshold | Visible but minor traits — altered eye structure, subdermal patterning, non-human vocal harmonics. Usually passes as human with effort. |
| III | Integrated | A full secondary physiology present alongside the human one: gills and lungs, a second circulatory rhythm. The most common playable / companion class. |
| IV | Divergent (Splice) | The human baseline has been functionally overwritten by the grafted trait. Legally still a person. Treated, in practice, as an asset. |
| V | Feral (Unbound) | No coherent human psychology remains, or the grafted trait is actively hostile to human cognition. Custodial Division's problem, not Genesis Wing's. |
| — | Unclassified ("The Quiet Ones") | Subjects with no physical trait at all whose presence measurably destabilizes Marrow in others nearby. Not discussed on the record. |
STAFF NOTE
Every subject's file is stamped with a stability glyph, a strain glyph (or glyphs, if overlapping), and a directive glyph, in that order. Field agents are expected to read a stamp faster than they read a name. See The Graft Script for the full glyph key.
continue to the wheel of strains →