From the publisher's website: "What's Degenesis about? Degenesis takes place in a ruined future, 500 years in the future. Civilization as we know it has been demolished by a asteroid swarm. 7 cultures (the northern Borcers, the insect-plagued Frankers, the nomadic Pollens, the war-ridden Balkhanians, the crusadic Purgaryans, the Hybrispaniards torn by civil strife and the up and coming Africans fight for hegemony. Characters can belong to 13 organisations and cults (the wandering Scrappers, the technophiliac Chronists, the medical Spitalians, mercenary Hellveticans, righteous sledge-hammer wielding Judges or the Neo-Lybian merchant kings with their avenging forces of Scourgers among others). But there's another danger for man: A strange growth or disease came from the stars, infecting fungi, men and animals. The Sepsis, as the strange growth is called, plagues the world, as its the source of the psychoactive Burn drug. Children and newborns affected by the Sepsis show strange abilities. When these children grow up, they are often exterminated or ostracized before they grow up as Psychonauts, gifted with psionic powers but also in danger of losing their minds by communing with the hive mind created by the Sepsis growth."