Before the City turned into a paradise for the psychopaths and the apathetic, there was the Establishment. The Establishment took over shortly after the Last Betrayal, maintaining some degree of order over the City. In the early days, the Establishment’s council was ambitious. Determination to outdo their predecessors led the Establishment to push hard for ground-breaking research. Scientific experiments abandoned by the previous Regiment, deemed unethical or controversial are restarted. Projects considered too dangerous and environmentally irresponsible are given unrestricted funding and access. Morals are secondary, after all, it’s for the sake of ushering a new Golden Age for humankind. For a short period of time, the City flourished. The freedom granted to creative minds (albeit the more twisted ones) resulted in various breakthroughs in fields which has remained stagnant for centuries.

The Meat Research Lab (MRL) are one of the multitude of companies which were funded by research grants by the Establishment. The MRL mission statement was simple enough – to be the first company to grow sustainable lab grown meat to feed the planet. It was an ambitious, but important project. After all, the altered conditions of the planet after the Great War left it in no state to sustain most of its living creatures. It was a few years before they were successful in reproducing GM meat which looks and tastes like real meat. The Establishment basked in the shared glory as MRL won numerous awards and plaudits. Grocery shops, convenient stores and supermarkets all over the City carried MRL products – MRL’s Aged Kobe Beef, MRL’s Country Chicken, MRL’s Tender Off-the-Bone Ribs. The future looks bright for the MRL.

That is, until the first body was found ripped to shreds near an MRL facility. A second body followed suit within days. Then ten more bodies the following week. The City’s Denizens panicked and demanded an investigation into the facilities, whose proximity to these attacks warranted suspicions. A search order was promptly issued, and a squadron of military personal investigated the MRL facility, under vehement protests by MRL.

Growing cells in cultures is common practice for any laboratory, what MRL was doing was growing whole animals in tanks, submerged in a chemically-engineered amniotic baths. On top of that, MRL’s scientists were splicing animal’s DNAs to reproduce better quality specimens. Aside from more tender meat texture and the perfect amount of marbling, they removed pesky things such as eyes, horns, hoofs, feathers, furs as well as adding more things such as extra limbs, an extra dozen pair of ribs. When the squad investigating the facility came into one of MRL’s culture chambers, they saw endless rows of tanks containing floating misshapen shapes. The contents of the tank twitched occasionally under the glow of the fluorescent lights, some imperfect ones had an eye, or three. Several officers of the law puked. It was like a dystopian laboratory owned by a mad scientist, it probably was.

In situations like this, as is the case in any civilized world, the press had a field day. MRL was shut down to widespread public condemnation, and the facilities were cordoned off from the public pending further investigation. Under threat of the death penalty and promises of lighter sentences, several of MRL’s executives admitted that a few of its experimental specimens unfortunately went missing. All of the MRL’s executives were sentenced to imprisonment for life and shipped off to the Establishment’s Super Maximum Prison.

Little is known about the unholy abominations created by the MRL, as most records of the company’s experiments have been permanently wiped by MRL the day the facility was searched. What little eyewitness accounts of Rippers attacks are often supplemented by exaggerations, as well as the mad ravings of survivors of the attack.

A compilation of accounts approximate the Rippers to be roughly 6 to 8 feet in length, dark-coloured or greyish, six to eight legged, a pair of blackened insect-like wings covered the whole of its back. Multiple jaws are scattered throughout its body. It has a tiny head which is dominated by its jaws. Aptly described, it was like a giant cockroach from hell. Some controversial accounts claim that it is highly intelligent and used its victim’s body like a skin puppet to lure more victims. One thing is certain though; the Rippers avoids bright places and hunts in the night time.

However, even with the closing of the MRL facilities, the frequency of Rippers attacks did not decrease. In fact, it has been increasing steadily, striking terror into the Denizens of the City. Some of the more paranoid Denizens of the City speculated that the Establishment secretly continued the production of Rippers. Some of them suspect that Rippers are the Establishment’s means of enforcing its curfew. Other more paranoid Denizens suspect that the Establishment uses the Rippers as a means of keeping the City’s population down. With all the Establishment’s food programs crashing, it was hard enough feeding everyone in the City. If history has told us one thing, hungry people usually leads to revolt, whereas dead people are much better-behaved. Fear is as good motivator as any to keep people in line.