ARK Lost Colony's Turned Enemies: Thralls, Neophytes and Revenants
Arat Prime's ruin has a name for what happened to the people who lived there: the Turning. In Lost Colony's story, the Lost King — once the scientist Darius Anthom — used the alien resource Red Element to remake his own survivors into monsters loyal only to him. What the wiki does not document is any way for a player to undergo that transformation, choose to "cling to humanity," or resist a personal corruption meter — ark.wiki.gg has no dedicated page for the Turning as a mechanic, and a site search for "Turned" returns nothing but turrets and turbines. This guide covers what is documented: the three factions of turned enemies (Thralls, Neophytes, Revenants), the Red Element and Cursed Items systems tied to the lore, and how players actually engage the turned in play — through Outpost Missions, not a transformation of their own.
What "The Turning" Actually Means in Lost Colony
The wiki's Thrall entry states it plainly: "Thralls are survivors infected and turned by the effects of Red Element by the Lost King and are found only in the Lost Colony DLC." The Lost King "used Red Element to transform his men into Thralls in order to ensure a future for Arat Prime, even if it meant changing into ruthless monsters." That's the whole mechanism as documented — an NPC backstory explaining hostile spawns, not a system the player opts into.
Three related fields are worth stating as gaps rather than guessing at: the wiki documents no player-facing "cling to humanity vs. undergo the Turning" choice on the Lost Colony, Thrall, Neophyte, Red Element, or Cursed Items pages; no player "survive or resist the Turning" mechanic exists (the survivor's actual story role is to fight the Thrall, Revenant, and Neophyte forces via Outpost Missions and the DLC's boss, not to resist a personal transformation); and no character-level reversal is documented at all — the only "reverse" in the lore is item-level, the Bloodforge, which "can also reverse the conversion process, turning the Red Element back into regular Element." That converts a crafting resource, not a person.
Thralls: The Lost King's Red Element Soldiers
Thralls carry the species designation Homo servilis and a temperament the wiki lists flatly as "Eternally Obedient." Before the "Cataclysm" that wrecked Arat Prime, they were "once scientists and survivors who worked with the Lost King (then Darius Anthom)" — colleagues and neighbors, not monsters by origin. Red Element exposure is what changed that, turning them into what the wiki calls "ruthless monsters" bound to the Lost King's will. The wiki does not give Thralls a documented cure, downgrade, or "turn back" path — as far as the source goes, the transformation is one-directional for them, same as it is for every other turned NPC covered here.
Neophytes and Revenants: Two More Faces of the Corruption
Neophytes look like a different creature entirely, but the wiki ties their origin to the same source: "Neophytes, much like Thralls, were originally human clones created by the Lost King using the Codex, having undergone heavy genetic modifications through Red Element." The result is described as "feral, bat-like, grotesque humanoid abominations" — the wiki adds that they're "barely distinguishable as having ever been human, given their monstrous, almost gargoyle/bat-like appearance." Where Thralls kept a human silhouette under Red Element's influence, Neophytes didn't; the Codex cloning step plus heavier gene modification is the documented difference.
Revenants are a separate category entirely, and the wiki is explicit about not conflating them with the Lost King's work: "Revenants are the reanimated remains of survivors and creatures reanimated by Rockwell himself. They are not tameable in any way and are extremely aggressive to anyone and anything in their way." So Lost Colony's turned enemies split into two distinct corruptions with two distinct creators — Red Element under the Lost King (Thralls, Neophytes) versus Rockwell's reanimation (Revenants) — and the wiki never merges the two into one unified "Turning" system. Players meet Revenants as enemies during Defense Outposts specifically, described in the mission text as "waves of mindless Revenants" attacking alongside the fight against the Thrall legions.
Red Element and Cursed Items: The Corruption's Only Player-Facing Systems
Red Element itself is described in the wiki as "a strange, highly advanced material humming with energy" that "dissolves when transferred across ARKs." Mechanically, though, the wiki documents it only as a crafting resource — an Element substitute for Tek-tier recipes on Lost Colony. It lists no player corruption, mutation, or transformation debuff from handling or carrying it. Picking it up doesn't start a personal Turning; it fuels crafting benches.
The one "curse"-named system players actually touch is Cursed Items, and the wiki is clear that the curse is a benefit, not a cost: "Cursed items innately have a passive ability that restores their durability over time," and they "can equip two Equipment Traits, as opposed to the one equipment trait that standard items can equip." Cursed blueprints require Red Element on top of base materials to craft. There's no corruption meter, no monster-transformation clock, and no humanity cost attached to owning or crafting them — the "curse" is entirely a gameplay perk with a lore-flavored name.
Treat Red Element as a resource to stockpile for Tek recipes and Cursed Item blueprints, not as anything that risks your survivor. When you're ready to fight the turned factions, Outpost Missions are the documented way in: Defense Outposts have you stand with the Lost King's Thralls against "waves of mindless Revenants" to lower the Thrall army's hostility, while Attack Outposts send you the other way — breaching "the fortified strongholds of the Thrall legions" to fuel a rebellion against them. Pick a side's missions consistently rather than mixing both, since they push the same faction-hostility meter in opposite directions.
Running your own ARK server
Lost Colony's Outpost Missions push a faction-hostility meter that's easy to lose track of in a crowded public server — someone else's Attack Outpost run can undo the Defense-side progress you spent an evening building, and vice versa. Running your own ARK server keeps that meter (and your Red Element and Cursed Item stockpile) moving in the direction you actually chose, with nobody else's missions interfering.
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Conclusion
Lost Colony's "Turning" is documented lore, not a player mechanic: the Lost King used Red Element and Codex cloning to twist his own people into Thralls (Homo servilis, "Eternally Obedient") and Neophytes ("bat-like, grotesque humanoid abominations"), while Rockwell separately reanimated the dead into untameable Revenants. Red Element and Cursed Items are the only parts of that corruption players actually handle, and both are documented as gameplay systems — crafting resource and item-perk — with no personal transformation attached. Anything the wiki doesn't say — a humanity meter, a way to resist or reverse a player's own Turning, a "cling to humanity" choice — isn't guessed at here, because it isn't in the source.