In the year 2508, humanity survives by "cracking" entire planets for their resources. During the second year of an illegal mining operation on the remote planet Aegis VII, funded by the secretive Church of Unitology, the colonists unearth a mysterious monolith-like artifact known as a Marker, an object held sacred by the Unitologists. But the relic harbors a terrible secret. When the Marker is transported into the colony, its crew begins suffering vivid, maddening hallucinations that drive them to violence. Soon the entire colony spirals into chaos as the dead rise again as grotesque mutated horrors called Necromorphs. Amid the outbreak, a handful of desperate survivors, including colony detective Nathan McNeill and soldier Gabe Weller, band together and fight to escape the doomed colony and reach the mining ship USG Ishimura in orbit above.