Former

Former
Physical description and appearance
Species	Lambent
Eye color	Gold
Chronological and personal information
Era(s)	Lambent Pandemic
Notable Facts	Humans Turned Lambent Very agile; able to jump very high and move fast
Weapons	Claws
Affiliation	Lambent

"She's Lambent! It's spread to humans!"

—Samantha Byrne being attacked by a Former

Formers were Lambent Humans encountered during the Lambent Pandemic. Delta-One recorded the first sightings of these mutated humans in the seemingly uninhabited town of Mercy while looking for fuel to reach Azura. They later began to appear in many cities with large concentrations of Imulsion.

History

Lambent Pandemic

"It's, it's, it's—it's some—some kinda fever. People started burnin' up, screamin' and fightin', turnin' crazy. And I'm damned if I'm gonna turn up like that, like some rabid dog, not even human no more!"

—Crazy old man

They were the first example of Lambency in humans witnessed since the Sires almost a century earlier. Cities such as Mercy, Char and Halvo Bay began seeing the first signs of an epidemic with a fever. Soon humans began turning into Lambent creatures, attacking everyone around them. While the infection was an advanced form of Rustlung, the Stranded believed it was something else since Imulsion was not known to be a parasitic life form at the time.

Mission to Mercy

Delta-One first met Formers in Mercy while looking for Imulsion to use as fuel to get to Azura, where Adam Jonathon Fenix was being held. The existence of Lambent humans was first implied when Delta-One met a crazy old man in the town of Mercy who had rigged the town's pipeline of Imulsion to explode. Extremely paranoid and unable to provide Delta-One with a clear answer as to why he had done this, he instead vaguely suggested that Mercy was suffering from some kind of epidemic before fleeing.

Delta-One would later come across the crazy old man's corpse in the sewers, with few clues as to how he died. In the same sewers, they would first meet Formers; Marcus Fenix originally mistook the Former for a crying female Stranded and Delta-One were forced to fire upon and kill it when it started to attack. Delta-One was later ambushed by more Formers in the sewers and believed that the Formers were just in Mercy and wanted to stop them from spreading all over Sera. After dealing with another Former horde outside Mercy's Town Hall, Delta-One and the two Stranded inside were attacked by two Formers, who killed the Stranded. The group later fought more Formers while getting to the pump and more attacked while the squad was dealing with Locust from an airport they had passed through. All the attacking Formers along with the Locust and other Lambent lifeforms that attacked were killed when Dominic Santiago sacrificed himself to save his friends.

Mission to Char

When Delta-One activated the elevators in Griffin's Imulsion Tower, they believed that Formers were non-existant in the tower and just were in Mercy. They were proven wrong when they came out of the shafts and elevators when a swarm attacked the group, but were repulsed by them. This prompted Jace to wonder if everyone would turn into Formers, but Marcus reassured him that only those who worked with Imulsion would turn into them. As squad fought to disable the safety break, they encoutered more Formers, all slain by Delta-One.

Return to Halvo Bay

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Lambent Humans were again encountered in the ruins of Halvo Bay when Damon Baird returned to the city with Augustus Cole and Clayton Carmine. They were also reunited with their old comrade Garron Paduk. As Paduk led them to a beached Imulsion rig which his people lived in, during the time Paduk went to meet up with the squad his people turned into Formers and attacked them throughout the buildings and the rig. When a flare was set off, after the squad fought some Locust who were alerted by the flare, Formers started joining the fight by jumping on the rig. After Damon and his squad was picked up by a Raven, the Formers fought against the Locust, although it is unknown who won the battle.

When Adam Fenix activated his weapon, all Formers died, along with all other kinds of Lambent, Imulsion, and the Locust Horde.

Tactics

Formers will always attack in swarms. Unlike the majority of the Lambent Horde which move at regular or very slow speeds, these move extremely fast, almost the same speed as Tickers. Despite this, Formers also attack the fastest out of all the Lambent, easily taking down a player on Insane difficulty. Formers are extremely frail, with a few shots from moderately powered weapons to one shot from more powerful weapons like the Gnasher Shotgun or Longshot. If you have a Retro Lancer, this weapon is helpful in thinning their numbers because of their frailty. Using the charge instantly kills them, and the execution is skipped, so if put on a very long line, you can kill many Formers this way. Avoid using slow weapons like the Torque Bow as the reloading time is slow, and you will get surrounded very easily by them.

Behind the scenes

• Formers appear as enemies in Horde 2.0, although in much smaller numbers, usually in groups of eight.
• Dizzy Wallin remarked that Mercy had been "busier than a fiddler's elbow" just a few months before Delta-One arrived, suggesting Lambency affected humans fairly quickly.
• The human population of Mercy marking their doors in red to save themselves from "the plague" references the tenth plague of Egypt, where all first-borns of those who did not mark their doorposts with lamb's blood were killed.
• Some Formers seem to have control of themselves, as if a player listens carefully in Campaign, one can hear a Former saying "Kill me!", however this tends to come from a female Former, not a male one.