YEAAAHHHH CHARACTER GROWTH!!! I'm glad you're continuing Mortician Silver's saga :)
Will this be a prequel or sequel of ADF-20?
Anywayyy, let's see… technical things…
- This is perfect! Great choice on having varying scales and morphs. Love to see some diversity and no racism lol, and it simply being a physical feature rather than a defying trait is oddly wholesome.
- A separate story of the secret dark side of Auscaleia would go SO HARD! No rush, but I can hardly wait lol… Maybe at least tease it in your main article, like the author noticing a fully-white morph lizard person being dragged away screaming obscenities, and not thinking much of it except that it physically looked extremely unique and beautiful, or something.
- Oh shit, the magnetic field repellent sounds like a great solution! And I think I found a way to solidify this, to avoid any plot holes and whatnot. Scientifically, the mutation air (which can be dubbed ADF-X-1) could work like a veeeeery strange virus, localized to Auscaleia due to perfect conditions or something. It specifically targets the cell's nucleus from reptillians and, as it spreads from one host to another, it carries over a small amount of the genetic material of the previous host to a new one. This will explain the shortened lifespan of native "normal" lizards there. But, due to some weird magnetization trait (the anomalous part), it is strongly attracted to the iron in human, or mammalian blood. Getting a couple of these particles inside of your body won't really do much, but being exposed to them long-term will start fucking up your DNA, fusing it with the reptillian genetic material from it's previous hosts. This can also explain why the "patient zero's" only develop mild skin lesions and stuff, cause they still possess mostly their own DNA, but when this DNA is passed over to their children, their whole DNA will be the fucked up, fused reptile DNA. And, since they're constantly exposed to more of it, they simply grow up as lizard-human hybrids. Now, because the "virus" behaves like a magnet, having a magnetized necklace, a magnetic hat, or whatever, will greatly repel the virus to the point of being nearly undetectible. Once you keave Auscaleia, you pass through a big MRI machine that ensures the virus is wiped off completely. The kinks can also be explained. There's metal everywhere in Auscaleia, obviously. This acts as an "attractor" for the virus, keeping clusters of it for Auscaleians to inhale. Then, some places that have strong magnets, like hospitals, will simply be "deflectors", aka places that have very small amounts of the virus as it is being repelled by the magnetic fields. Meaning, each Auscaleian will surely come in contact with a dose of that virus throughout the day, even if there are pockets not containing it.
BOOM, SCIENCE BITCH! Hope this gets you ready for the draft. Wanna reserve a spot? Got and ADF number in mind??