Ideas for a new type of mutant?

I have an idea for a group of mutants that I refer to as Outcasts. Their backstory is as follows.

In the aftermath of the war birth defects and deformities were common, particularly among survivors and communities that had been exposed to radiation. Typically these deformities were minor and unnoticeable, like an extra toe or an extra nipple, while others could be quite extreme, like an extra arm or an extra eye. These radically deformed mutants often had difficultly being accepted by their “normal” friends and family. Most would eventually be cast out by their communities due to post-war superstitions or just plain old bigotry against the deformed. Those that managed to survive the harshness of the wastes would eventually find company in other deformed humans that had suffered the same fate.

Some of these mutant outcasts would band together to form their own communities, providing safe haven for others of their kind. They would interbreed with each other, multiplying the severity of the mutations in their offspring. Over the course of a few generations they would rapidly devolve into forms that were barely recognizable as human.

But for now, they look more like Futurama’s sewer mutants.
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(Minus the animalistic features, like tentacle arms)

The Futurama screen for refence works, but what you described made me think more of the Morlocks from the X-Men comics.

https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Morlocks_(Earth-616)
 
The Futurama screen for refence works, but what you described made me think more of the Morlocks from the X-Men comics.

https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Morlocks_(Earth-616)
Never read X-men but that does sound very similar to what I was going for.


Originally my idea for the Outcasts was a little more convoluted. I decided to post a watered-down version, but I’ve been thinking my original idea was a little more, well, original.
They would interbreed with each other, multiplying the severity of the mutations in their offspring.
So, originally, I was thinking that mutants with similar deformities would gravitate toward one another. For example, mutants with multiple arms would prefer each other’s company over mutants with multiple eyes, and vice versa. This would lead to similar mutants interbreeding with one another, resulting in offspring with a similar mutation, just amplified. So over time, mutants with an extra arm or two having kids with each other would eventually lead to a unique breed of mutant with half a dozen arms or more.

The Outcasts would be a specific village/tribe of these mutant offspring, with a rigid caste system in place that gave each breed of mutant a specific role in society. If I have the time and inclination later I may edit this post and go into more detail about the specific ‘breeds’.
 
Had a few.

One idea I had together with @The Dutch Ghost were Plant People.

Short version: Pre-War artificial flora (possibly related to the Shi Vine) is unleashed on the Wasteland. It grows and with time, it becomes an intelligent, sapient entity of networked plants, fungi and such. Think "Planet" from Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. Eventually, a cult comes to worship it as a God - its not a God nor actively wanting to be one, but it's such an alien intelligence, everything it says is pretty strange and comes off as god-like.

At some point, the Cult finds out that if you threw human beings into it, it will infest them and the people will either die or return changed into people-plant hybrids. They think this is their god judging people - those who return changed were blessed and chosen, the ones who perish were judged and found lacking.

What is actually happening, however, is that post-war humans are mutated by rads (and FEV), and the "Plant God", created to purge nature of radiation and its effects, is doing its best to "fix" the humans it comes in contact with. However, being a giant neural network of plants also means it has no idea how human bodies actually work ("Oxygen goes in and Carbon goes out? Strange"). So it decides to do the next best thing and improvises with what it has - plants, fungi and such. Human being goes in, Plant Person comes out.

Well, IF they come out - sometimes they break, die and get consumed. Sometimes some deformed monster like a Spore Carrier comes out. Those are the failures.

Essentially, they look like every human-plant hybrid in fiction. The males are The Heap/Swamp Thing/Man-Thing/Groot nature god types, while the females are Demeter/Dryad/Poison Ivy nature goddess types. People who are human-plant symbionts, each one a strange, weird thing.

(I was also thinking that Ghouls get turned into "Harolds" or weird plant zombies. It can't affect living Super Mutants because their immune systems are so strong, they kill any foreign infections)
 
I always rather liked the "Atomic Horror" concepts from Adamowicz's Fo3 concept art.

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Only trouble is how do you make them distinct from ghouls. You could make them not immortal like ghouls, just people who have melted together and had their genes fused and twisted by radiation, but then you have the problem of how they would be around by the modern day. I guess you could say that htey established a breeding population, though I somehow doubt that...

I guess you could just make them a kind of ghoul, ones that were particuarly close to blasts. Or you could have it be something entirely new, modern day Wastelanders exposed to radioactive or toxic sludge of some kind.
I was reminded of this recently and had the idea that these Atomic Horrors could’ve been created from the bodies friends and family hugging in each other in their final moments. Those not completely incinerated by the bomb being “melted” into each other by extreme radiation. I’d imagine their minds would meld together as one, maybe giving them split personality disorders or something. They’d still be immortal and pre-war like ghouls but they’d fulfill a role more similar to FNV’s Nightkin as crazy, unpredictable, dangerous mutants.
 
I had an idea for a sub-race called "Cat-Eyed People". Its exactly what it says on the tin, they're mutants who have eyes like cats.

Cats see very well in the dark thanks to their eyes’ rod-to-cone ratio. These extra light-sensitive rods thrive in dim light, allowing cats to see clearly in about ⅙ the light as humans. While this allows crepuscular cats to hunt for prey at dusk, it comes at a cost: Less color and near-sightedness.

They're often used in tasks needing better low-light vision, which are often a bit legally iffy. Thus the stereotype that they're a race of thieves. Well-paid thieves, however, they are often found in the employ of gangs, mercs, mobsters and governments.

It is said they have a homeland, a secret city perpetually in twilight, where only they can see. They deny it vigorously and say they live in small groups and tribes, generally near cities. Everyone who claims that their homeland exists and where it is, vanishes forever shortly after.
 
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