In creaky, rusted, small-town mausolea, in soot-stained urban funeral homes, in the empty shells of ghost town churches, they are busy. We are their seeds; our corpses, their harvest. These Harvesters work in secret, behind many faces, and in hidden places in the night. Their Engines churn away, their monstrous alchemy converting human flesh and human nerves to alien mechanisms.
The Harvesters have no one face or presentation, but hide each of their Operations behind a Facade within, but at the limits of, our communities. Funeral parlours, medical waste disposal facilities, private and discreet rehab clinics, neglected nursing homes, or even asylums for the mad are their fronts. They set up shop anywhere human bodies go in and are not expected to come out.
Each Operation has a spider’s web of Harvesters. In the centre is the Mastermind, who seemingly rules the facade. The Mastermind wears a face that is impressive to humans, often a symbol of authority, or respect, but also of revulsion and fear. But the Mastermind, though apparently human, is nothing close. It speaks for the facade it directs, make deals with humans, and intimidates interlopers to keep the operation running. It may take on forms other than that of the operational facade’s face to infiltrate, and seduce, but the number of forms is limited. Perhaps it may only ‘store’ a handful of forms, or the process of taking on a form wastes much of their resources. In any of its forms it is unnaturally rugged and powerful, physically and psychically — it reaches out to humans in dreams to torment them, if they dare interfere.
The Mastermind commands and shepherds the Converted. These are the human dead, given new and alien vitality by the engines of the Harvesters. Once they’ve undergone this process, even though their original faces may be dimly recognized by horrified loved ones, they’re no longer any kind of real human form.
What they are converted to is depends on the purposes and goals of each Harvester outbreak.