The scavenger caste of the topside tundra.

Everything of value was plundered three thousand generations ago. Now the scabs just keep stealing from each other—or eating each other—within the failing towers of the Retro Metros, a scabberjabber term for any sizable city that once commanded high rents and shoulder to shoulder humanity.

Scabs eat what they can find when they find it, befriend those that have a use to them, and take whatever shiny thing might buy them status, shelter, food, or another sunrise.

Appearance:
A little smaller, hairier and more nimble than in days of old. Their larger ears have better hearing. Scabs have a fine layer of fur that covers their entire bodies, and though that hair still comes in the traditional colors from human history, some scabs have a flair for the ostentatious. Clothes, body armor, face masks, and dyed hair are often a means of personal expression, or even kith identity and status.

Temperament:
Scabs are quick. Twitchy. They lack social graces like small talk and not-killing-each-otherness. They form affiliated groups called "kith" that vaguely resemble families or broods or squads or tribes or posses, but there are also scabs with no alliances who drift between the kith as messengers and mercenaries.

Kith always have someone on top, a figurehead that rules because they beat out all the other upstart power hungry warlord wannabes. Unstructured kith don’t last long and scabs who leave or lose their own kith are usually quick to be absorbed into a new kith.

Scabs aren’t known for their long-term planning. Most don’t live to see past 35. And with one’s worth valued by what they literally bring to the table, there aren’t many elder statesmen in scab society. “Beat the meek and eat the weak” is the closest the scabs have to a nursery rhyme.