ERSATZ WORLD! CROWN ARMY

Mophead — Appearance Mophead has a tall, lanky humanoid frame with unusually long arms and narrow shoulders, giving him a slightly unbalanced silhouette. His body looks somewhat worn and artificial, with muted, dirty-looking colors rather than anything bright or lively. His defining feature is his head, which resembles an old mop or tangled mass of coarse fibers. The strands hang unevenly around his face and neck, obscuring parts of his features. Some pieces stick outward at strange angles, making his outline look messy and almost insect-like. His face underneath is pale and rigid, with small, deeply set eyes that don't seem to reflect much emotion. His mouth is thin and unnaturally straight when closed, making his expression difficult to read. When he moves, his facial expressions can feel slightly delayed or unnatural. His clothing is simple and utilitarian—dark, worn fabric with signs of age and heavy use. Nothing about him looks polished. His posture tends to be slightly hunched, and his movements are slow and deliberate, which makes him feel more unsettling than if he were constantly moving.

Warwick — Appearance Warwick is a large, imposing boar-man with a broad, heavy build. He has the proportions of a powerful humanoid, but almost everything about his upper body carries distinctly boar-like traits. His head is that of a massive wild boar, with a thick, blunt snout, broad nostrils, small dark eyes, and prominent curved tusks protruding upward from either side of his mouth. His ears are short and pointed, sitting high on his head. Coarse, dark bristles cover the top and sides of his head and continue down the back of his neck. His skin is rough and weathered, with a grayish-brown tone. His shoulders, arms, and chest are covered in a layer of short, coarse fur that becomes thicker around his spine and forearms. His hands are large, with thick fingers and blunt, dark nails that resemble crude claws. Warwick's clothing is heavy and practical, suited to someone built for physical work rather than elegance. He wears worn trousers, sturdy boots, and a battered sleeveless vest or work jacket that leaves his powerful arms exposed. His clothes look old and frequently used, with dirt and wear embedded into the fabric. Despite his intimidating size, his posture isn't constantly aggressive. He usually stands with his shoulders slightly forward and his arms hanging heavily at his sides. His expression tends to be stern and difficult to interpret because of his boar-like face.

Carrie — Appearance

Carrie is a male humanoid soldier with a gaunt, worn appearance. His head and most of his face are heavily wrapped in aged, dirty white bandages, leaving only specific parts of his face exposed.

Only one eye is visible, peering out from between the bandages. The eye gives him a tired, intense appearance, especially because so much of his face is hidden.

His mouth remains completely exposed. The skin around it is badly damaged and pulled into a permanently disturbing expression, with his mouth appearing unnaturally stretched open. Inside are mutilated, irregular teeth, giving his face its most recognizable and unsettling feature.

He has very short hair, barely extending beyond the top and sides of his head. It's rough and uneven, with only a small amount visible around the edges of the bandages.

His body is lean and somewhat wiry rather than heavily muscular. He wears a worn military uniform, practical and battered from prolonged use. The clothing is loose enough to fit his thin frame but still clearly identifies him as a soldier. His boots and other equipment are similarly weathered.

Carrie's overall silhouette is unmistakable: a thin, battered soldier with a heavily bandaged head, one exposed eye, a horribly distorted exposed mouth, damaged teeth, and extremely short hair. The bandages and ruined mouth dominate his appearance, making his face immediately recognizable even from a distance.

Munroe — Appearance

Munroe is a tall, lanky humanoid with a build similar to Mophead. His body is thin and somewhat awkwardly proportioned, with long limbs and narrow shoulders that give him a slightly unsettling silhouette.

His most distinctive feature is his eyes. One eye is noticeably larger than the other, creating an asymmetrical appearance that makes his face immediately recognizable. The larger eye gives him an especially unusual, almost unnerving expression.

Munroe has long brown hair that falls naturally down the sides of his head and reaches approximately to his shoulders. His hair is somewhat messy rather than neatly styled, adding to his worn and unkempt appearance.

His facial features are otherwise humanoid, but the uneven eyes and long hair give his face a distinctly strange character. His overall appearance fits the grim, surreal aesthetic of Ersatz rather than looking like a conventional human soldier.

His clothing is practical and worn, matching the setting and giving him the appearance of someone accustomed to a harsh environment.

Overall, Munroe has a thin, lanky frame, shoulder-length brown hair, and one dramatically oversized eye, giving him an immediately recognizable and subtly unsettling appearance.

Porcelain-Masked Guards — Appearance

The guards are tall, humanoid figures with a rigid, uniform appearance. Their bodies are concealed beneath dark, formal-looking clothing and protective gear, giving them an almost anonymous silhouette.

Their defining feature is their porcelain masks. Each guard wears a smooth, pale mask covering the entire face. The masks have an unnervingly clean, artificial appearance, contrasting with the darker and more worn environment around them. Their features are minimal and deliberately expressionless, making it impossible to tell what the person underneath is feeling.

The porcelain itself has a slightly imperfect, handmade quality rather than looking like modern plastic. Subtle differences between masks make each guard look like an individual while still maintaining the same eerie uniformity.

Their clothing is dark and practical, covering almost the entirety of their bodies. Gloves and sturdy footwear further hide any recognizable human features.

They stand and move with controlled, deliberate movements, rarely displaying unnecessary gestures. When several guards appear together, their matching masks and clothing make them look less like ordinary soldiers and more like a single organized unit.

The overall impression is cold, silent, and impersonal—the pale porcelain faces standing out starkly against their dark uniforms.

Nurse — Appearance

The Nurse is a somewhat tall, slim humanoid woman with a relatively delicate build. At first glance, she appears almost completely normal and unremarkable, with an ordinary human face and proportions.

However, the appearance of her face changes dramatically on one side. That entire side is dark black, sharply contrasting with the normal coloration of the rest of her face. The eye on that side is completely closed and non-functioning, leaving that half of her face strangely still compared to the normal side.

She wears a small white nurse's cap on her head. Attached to it is a thin white veil that hangs down over the affected side of her face, partially obscuring the blackened area and the closed eye without completely hiding them.

Her clothing is a traditional-looking nurse's uniform, predominantly light in appearance and neat compared with the harsher surroundings of Ersatz. The clean uniform contrasts noticeably with the unnatural appearance of one side of her face.

Her normal side gives her a calm, almost approachable appearance, while the blackened side creates a stark sense of wrongness. The veil partially concealing it makes the contrast even more noticeable.

Overall, the Nurse has a tall, slim figure, a mostly normal face with one side completely black and its eye permanently closed, and a small white nurse's hat with a veil covering that side.

The World of Ersatz

The world of Ersatz is a bleak, surreal war-torn world where humanity has turned death itself into part of the machinery of war.

At the center of everything is the Crown Army, an enormous military force fighting an apparently endless conflict. Its soldiers aren't simply warriors. They are workers, builders, carriers, cooks, medics, mechanics, and soldiers. Everyone has a role to play in keeping the war machine functioning.

The trenches are only one part of their world.

The Crown Army

The Crown Army recruits ordinary human beings and sends them into a society built around endless warfare. Soldiers transport supplies, construct and repair things, prepare food, perform medical work, handle bodies, operate machinery, and fight when required.

The Crown's system has made the unnatural seem ordinary.

Soldiers can die and return.

Some remember their previous lives.

Some remember almost nothing.

Some return noticeably changed.

And some never return at all.

For the soldiers, this creates an existence where they can never be completely certain what death actually means.

The Rezzer

The Rezzer is the machine at the center of this cycle.

Those who die can be taken back to the machine and used as part of the process of resurrection. The dead are not treated with the dignity normally associated with the deceased. They become resources within the Crown's system.

Some bodies are prepared as offerings, while others are returned to the Rezzer in the hope that they can be brought back.

Personal belongings and clothing are also treated as resources. Items belonging to the dead can be removed, processed, and reused for someone else.

Nothing is truly wasted.

The Crown's entire philosophy revolves around continuation: if something can be reused, it will be.

But resurrection comes with a terrible uncertainty.

A person who returns is not necessarily exactly the same person who died.

Memories can disappear.

Parts of a person's identity can become unclear.

And, most disturbingly, their physical form can change.

The Disfigured

The most frightening people in Ersatz are often the ones who were once completely ordinary.

The disfigured are human beings who have been altered through the strange processes surrounding resurrection and the war. They aren't naturally occurring monsters. They were people.

Some return looking almost completely normal.

Others come back visibly different.

Some develop features that resemble animals. Others become deeply uncanny, with distorted proportions or facial features that no longer look entirely human.

A person's body may return with unusual limbs, altered proportions, animal-like characteristics, or features that seem to belong to something else entirely.

Faces can become especially strange. A human head may develop an animal-like appearance, additional or altered teeth, an unusually broad mouth, or other abnormal features. In some cases, human and animal characteristics appear to have become fused together, creating something that looks neither completely human nor completely animal.

The alterations can be subtle or extreme.

One person might still look like an ordinary human being with only one disturbing feature.

Another might resemble a creature that could barely be recognized as the person they once were.

There is no guarantee that the changes follow any logical pattern.

That unpredictability is part of the horror.

The most disturbing part is that there is still a person underneath it all.

These aren't monsters that were born monsters.

They are soldiers, workers, friends, and family members who were once ordinary people.

The Wetwork

Wetwork is the grim system surrounding the handling of the dead.

The dead are brought into the machinery of the Crown rather than simply being buried and forgotten. Some are processed as offerings, while others are prepared to be sent back through the Rezzer.

The work is cold, methodical, and industrial.

Those responsible for it handle the remains of soldiers, separate reusable equipment and belongings, and prepare what is necessary for the resurrection process. Clothing, equipment, and other possessions can be cleaned, altered, and given to another soldier.

The Wetwork therefore represents one of the clearest examples of how the Crown has removed the individuality from death.

A dead soldier isn't necessarily remembered as someone's son, daughter, brother, sister, friend, or spouse.

They become material.

Even the equipment associated with them can simply be passed to another person.

The gas masks used by the soldiers also reflect the strange biological technology of this world. Rather than relying entirely on ordinary mechanical tubing, some of the masks incorporate flesh-like tubes, making the equipment itself feel disturbingly organic.

The Sun

There is also a mysterious supernatural presence surrounding the world.

The soldiers encounter imagery and phenomena associated with a strange sun-like or divine entity, often interpreted as a godlike presence.

Its exact nature remains mysterious, but it contributes to the feeling that the war is not merely a conflict between ordinary nations.

There is something larger behind the Crown's world.

Something that the soldiers don't fully understand.

Whether it is truly divine, something worshipped by the Crown, or something else entirely remains part of the mystery.

The Trench

The trenches are where much of the Crown's endless war is physically experienced.

They are filthy, dangerous, claustrophobic environments filled with soldiers who may have already died before and returned.

A soldier can fight beside someone who looks completely ordinary, only to encounter someone else whose body has been transformed into something deeply uncanny.

The contrast is important.

Not every soldier is a monster.

Not every resurrected person is visibly changed.

Some look completely normal.

Others have strange animal characteristics.

Others have bodies or faces that appear fundamentally wrong.

They all exist within the same military system.

The Families

The Crown's system extends beyond the battlefield.

Families of soldiers can live relatively comfortable lives while their relatives serve in the Crown Army. The soldier's continued existence and service can provide security for the people waiting at home.

But resurrection creates a terrible condition.

If a soldier dies and does not return, their family can lose the person they depended upon.

The difference between a soldier who dies and a soldier who permanently dies therefore becomes enormous.

As long as someone keeps returning, the family can continue believing that their loved one will eventually come home.

But if the Rezzer fails to bring them back, there is no second chance.

The family is left with the reality that the person they knew is truly gone.

The Horror of Ersatz

The greatest horror of Ersatz isn't simply that there are strange creatures.

It is that there aren't really monsters to begin with.

There are humans.

Humans who were sent to war.

Humans who died.

Humans who were put through the Rezzer.

Humans who came back wrong.

A soldier might return with an animal-like head, altered limbs, a distorted mouth, strange teeth, an unfamiliar face, or a combination of human and animal traits.

Another might come back looking almost exactly the same.

Another might forget who they were.

And another might never return at all.

The Crown has created a world where the line between human, corpse, soldier, and monster has become almost impossible to distinguish.

And beneath every distorted face is the same uncomfortable truth:

They were human first.

The Conmen

The Conmen are soldiers who have developed a reputation for knowing how to navigate the world of Ersatz.

They approach other soldiers, listen to what they need, and tell them exactly what they want to hear. They can offer directions, advice, information, reassurance, or guidance through unfamiliar parts of the trenches and surrounding areas.

Despite their name, not all Conmen are cruel or malicious.

Many of them are genuinely kind and approachable. They may help a lost soldier, explain where something is, or guide someone through a dangerous situation. They can appear to be some of the friendliest people a soldier might encounter.

But their help isn't free.

Conmen generally ask for food in return.

Food is one of the most valuable things in the world of Ersatz. Alongside warmth, it is one of the basic necessities that keeps a soldier alive and functioning. Giving away too much can leave someone hungry, cold, and vulnerable.

This creates an uncomfortable truth about the Conmen.

Some genuinely need the food.

Others collect it because they have learned they can trade it for things they want—such as cigarettes or opportunities to gamble.

A Conman might sincerely help someone and then immediately use the food they received for something entirely unrelated to survival.

Nobody can always tell which kind of Conman they are dealing with.

There is also an unspoken lesson among soldiers:

Food and warmth are not things you give away carelessly.

Helping someone can make you feel good, and refusing someone can make you feel cruel, but survival in the trenches often forces soldiers to put themselves first.

The Conmen exist in that uncomfortable space between kindness and exploitation.

They aren't necessarily villains.

They aren't necessarily trustworthy.

Some are simply soldiers who discovered that information, guidance, and reassurance can be traded for something more valuable than money.

And in a world where food and warmth can determine whether someone survives another day, that knowledge is a powerful thing to possess.