If one breathes Euphrosyne atmosphere for too long they may become feral after about 1 week. Feral disease can also be contracted much faster through the intentional or accidental consumption of large amounts of feralite, a toxic soot used as a ritual drug by some clan members.
transformation
The transformation into a feral usually causes intense hallucinations that escalate over the one-week period. At first, these hallucinations might actually be pleasant, with victims frequently reporting feeling “high.” During that period the progression can still be stopped and reversed with appropriate care. However, by the end of the week, victims experience extreme paranoia, anxiety, and uncontrollable aggression. That is also when they lose their ability to speak or understand human language and the damage becomes irreversible. They develop a strong desire to kill others, and there have been cases where victims have murdered their closest family members, sometimes even engaging in cannibalism immediately afterward. Near the very end of the transformation, the victim will abandon their human settlement or squad and run away into the wasteland until they run into a feral pack.
appearance
Ferals have a distinctly gray, dry, ashen skin tone, which can vary in shade from pale to almost black depending on their genetic skin color before they turned and the progression of their condition. They typically experience severe hair loss, but because they do not cut what remains, they are often seen with long, patchy hair, overgrown beards, and unkempt body hair.
Their nails are either overgrown and yellow or nibbled off. Their teeth are equally yellowed. While they are usually quite skinny due to a lack of food, their weight is tied directly to the pack hierarchy: those higher up get more food and are noticeably less emaciated.
One of their most unsettling features is their eyes. Their sclera (the whites of their eyeballs) turn yellow, but their irises retain their original human color and appearance, giving them a disturbing, deeply humanlike stare.
feral behavior and culture
Ferals are highly social and rarely travel alone, usually preferring large packs instead. Their packs greatly vary in size. Some just a couple of individuals while others span in hundreds. Despite lacking a coherent language, they are quite loud; they scream, grunt, and roar like crazed humans. Sometimes they speak words they are familiar with, like their own name or random English words they remember from before turning feral.
Ferals like to “talk” to each other, to themselves, or even to the humans they kill and eat. They will eat anything they can catch or find, including humans, and when hungry, they may even kill and eat each other. They know how to use fire and they will try to cook their food if they can but usually thats not possible in the rustland as there is no fuel so they just eat it raw.
While they cannot craft items themselves, they often carry and use crude weapons, including firearms if they manage to acquire them. They have even been known to use vehicles they have scavenged.
habitat and society
Ferals are most commonly encountered in the rustland. They are highly nomadic, rarely staying in the same area for long as they travel around in their packs or families constantly looking for prey.
When they do stop, ferals live together with their pack in dense camps. These temporary settlements consist of simple, makeshift shacks they have constructed, or occupy spaces that resemble caves, holes in the ground, walls, or underground areas.
The packs operate on a strict hierarchy. The fiercest and most social feral - often a female - sits at the top. Any changes in the hierarchy are resolved through fights, sometimes to the death. Because ferals often share food with pregnant and other females in their pack, the females tend to be slightly stronger and less malnourished, placing them slightly higher in the hierarchy than males.
combat
An average human can usually outrun or defeat a feral in unarmed combat, though the strongest ferals can easily kill most humans.
reproduction
Ferals reproduce with each other much like humans. They are extremely protective of their children. The children do not actually inherit the feral condition genetically, but because they are immediately exposed to the toxic atmosphere, they usually become feral soon after birth anyway. If a chid is removed from the mother and put in a filtered environment they will grow up to be a mostly normal human possibly with some slightly weird physical traits.