Stone Men

Stone Men were a lineage of humans created by the Averte Statum during their earliest years, when they kidnapped numerous engineers and computer scientists from various countries in order to help create drones and droids for their military. Over 400 people were captured and genomically modified, causing them to be extremely sensitive to sunlight. Exposure to any UV or even bright visible light would cause their skin to become calloused and scarred, resembling stone, and giving the group their name. Despite the term "men", there were an approximately equal number of women in this group.

Due to the genomic nature of the modifications, the stone-skin sickness was passed on from generation to generation, and hence stone men continued to exist long after the original group - and the Averte Statum itself - had died.

During the Dark Ages, Stone Men often continued their ancestor's tradition of working in computing and engineering for the Averte Statum. Others, however, defected to the criminal underworld and to various resistance groups. During the Settlement, many stone men made their home in the far reaches of the Outer Solar System, especially on Pluto. Although many stone men were proud of their genetic lineage, including their weakness to light, many of them took various kinds of medicine to enable them to live in daylight as normal humans, and others had their genomes altered to remove the genetic condition entirely.