#9 by Carnifex

And then it happened. The Blood Emperor was assassinated. The rebels were fortified in the palace and were swearing oaths to see Kusari rid of the Outcasts at all costs. What happened next shocked all of Sirius in a way that hadn’t happened in perhaps all the 800 years of colonisation. The Outcasts, in retribution for the rebel’s betrayal, started ‘cardiforming’ the two major planets in Kusari that they controlled. They spread highly potent drugs in the atmosphere above the small percentage of the planets that was dry land; and very high population density. The drugs started killing everyone who hadn’t already had long term exposure to cardimine which meant everyone not an Outcast. The populations rose up. On Planet Honshu they resisted and held out for a while and delayed the cardiforming, the Outcasts had fewer resources to draw on there. On Planet Kyushu the death toll on the planet was enormous and civilians in space trying to reach friends and family on the surface were killed in almost as many numbers by Outcasts protecting their new acquisition. Survivors there were few and far between, mostly workers on or under the oceans.
What was worse, not long afterward the rebels were crushed and the Blood Dragon government was re-established. But the damage was irreversible. Kusari was a nation twitching lifelessly as the Outcasts tried to turn it into a zombie state, a dead Kusari revived in the inhuman image of the Outcasts.