In an alternative 2010, something changed. Reports started coming in from all over the world about people transforming and changing into various things and eventually there were even rumors of magic returning to the world. Some people became animal-human hybrids, while others became creatures of myth, robots and more.
Panic spread across the globe as riots sprung up and fingers were pointed at each other. Everyone suffered as the transformed were oppressed in certain nations, while in others the transformed took control and enslaved the local humans.
The 2010's became an era of chaos and Instability till the major and nuclear powers all got together around a table and enforced peace under the threat of nuclear destruction for those who would not submit.
Now, in 2022, things are stabilizing again. Transformation is slowly, but surely, becoming a normal thing and even magic has become a documented reality. About 8% of the population has been transformed and the number of new cases of whatever is causing these changes has stabilized to around 50 cases a day.
These transformations are usually a long process, sometimes taking weeks or even months to complete. The actual feeling of transformation can be anything from pleasurable to horrifyingly painful.
Now communities for those transformed and currently transforming are being created all over the globe. These communities are supposed to support those who are changing and have changed and they actually do that properly. Most of them are lead by actually competent and caring people.
They are places of self-rediscovery and learning as their purpose is also to learn how transformed people in their various forms can be integrated into society and what caused all of this in the first place.
Going to these places is a choice and no one is forced into it by society as a now more powerful UN has enforced laws and rights for the transformed worldwide.
Most of these communities have their own residential and commercial districts for people to use. There even are transformed focused universities, gyms and much more.
Everything from lakes for aquatic transformed to burrows for for subterranean transformed exists in these places to accommodate as many people in their various forms as possible.