Additional Setting Information
Jan. 19th, 2012 12:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mach_n_rollGeneral info: The setting is Earth in the year 3240. Over twelve hundred years a lot has changed; including the advent of mobian races and the appearance of the chaos emeralds, which occurred at nearly the same time just before the end of the second millennium. The term "Mobian" was first coined by exasperated biologists who were having trouble discerning where the animal traits ended and the human traits began in these new creatures. Some have hypothesized that Mobians are the result of accelerated evolution due to being near the Chaos Emeralds' power, others guess it was a response to the pressures put on the environment by mankind during the later part of the second millennium and that the Emeralds had nothing to do with it. No one can be sure, but those new creatures seemed to have a knack for integrating with human society. There were a few difficulties at first, but after nearly a thousand years extremely few prejudices remain.
Geography: The geography of Sonic's world is based loosely on Earth's, but the names and cultures of countries, the flora and fauna and the topography have changed considerably, to the point where very little remains of the twenty-first century that's identifiable. Major oceans and continents remain the same: the Americas, Asia, Africa and the Australian continent. Angel Island, the floating landmass that houses and protects the Master Emerald, used to be called Christmas Island and was located in the East Indian Ocean. Sonic himself grew up in what would be considered south Australia, but has since used the windfall from his adventures to build a kind of home base with Tails’ help, in the tropics further north. The Kingdom of Soleanna is what would have been parts of Thailand and the Malay Penninsula. The areas of the US, Canada, Japan and Mexico have, over centuries, assimilated into one country with new borders and affiliations.
Tech level: High. Holographic tech and solid light are commonplace, as well as fusion power, limited antigravity, and even teleportation (though the technology is still far too clumsy and expensive to implement widely). Oddly the aesthetics have "gone retro" in such a way that holographic supercomputers can play old games and antiquated OS's, and cars that run on fusion power look slightly boxy by today's standards.
Mobian Culture: Mobians mingle with humans perfectly, and there are only a handful of culture points that they don't share with humans. One is nicknames. They almost all have human-sounding given names but are quick to take up nicknames, at least amongst friends. Another is clothing... or lack thereof. Most, especially females, wear clothes to define their sense of style rather than for warmth or modesty. On a more intimate topic, it's not that unusual to find two Mobians of different species enter into a relationship together; It's CONSIDERABLY more unusual to find one between a Mobian and a human, and the idea is still highly controversial for Mobians and humans alike.
On the Echidnas: The Echidna nation was native to parts of old Indonesia and the Philippines. When Angel Island first took flight, the relative isolation allowed the Echidnas to quickly develop high civilization of their own, no doubt augmented by the power of the Master Emerald. They became prideful and sought to use the Master Emerald to take over the rest of the world, believing they were the one true masters of this planet. They stormed the shrine, trampling chao as they went. The god Chaos rose up and destroyed them in what's now called the Chaos Catastrophe, which eradicated most of the race. There are now very few left, and only one that lives on Angel Island, who is charged with protecting the Master Emerald for the duration of his lifetime. As a side note, even hundreds of years later the act of killing a chao is considered a horrible taboo, even if few people now know where the taboo came from.
Space Colony ARK: The Burnulli spherical orbital space station codenamed ARK was the brainchild of the Government collective, and was the cutting edge of technology at the time of its launch. At any one time it was home to just over a hundred residents. Several brilliant scientists did their best work in the variable-gravity environments the space station boasted, including biotech expert Dr. Gerald Robotnik. At first innocent, their collective research started to gain greater and greater destructive applications until the government took notice and seized the research. The colonists resisted and the colony was deactivated, killing most of them. The event was quickly covered up by the Government, and even after the events transpiring in the Sonic Adventure 2 storyline the space station still lies dark and dormant.
Dr. Ivo “Eggman” Robotinik: The “good doctor” is the latest in a long line of brilliant scientists with a sliding scale of morality and a gift for harnessing their discoveries to martial application. He’s best known for his terrorizing work in nanite robotization: tiny airbourne machines that rearrange living flesh into a mechanical counterpart; the affliction is painful and nearly unstoppable with the end-result robotic creature is programmed to be totally loyal to him. He’s made several other attempts to gambit for supreme power, using everything from captive god-creatures to giant lasers to sattelite-takeover of war-room computers. All while somehow avoiding capture from both private and military pursuers. Needless to say, he is by far more dangerous than the fat buffoon the games make him out to be.
(the rest are character bios that are mostly here to flesh out the world, and will be replaced by PC bios should the character be apped.)
Sir Charles Hedgehog: Sonic’s uncle, and the closest thing to a father figure in his life. He's a research scientist specializing in energy waveform conversion and power systems. He was quick to give up his research when it was confiscated and took to early retirement, and while Sonic did pick up a few things from him, he wasn't even aware of his uncle's work on the Chaos Emeralds until just before he himself gathered them all for the first time. Uncle Chuck is almost as mellow as Sonic is hyperactive, with a sense of humor about life that gives one the impression that already knows what's going to happen and just doesn't wanna spoil the ending.
Miles “Tails” Prower is a yellow fox-boy with two tails, whom Sonic took under his wing when he was nine and Sonic was fifteen. They'd met when Sonic found Tails in the middle of tinkering with an old biplane of Sonic's, that had nearly become a permanent fixture of the beach instead of any kind of air transportation. Apparantly the kit didn’t have much in the way of a home, either; Sonic saw him as the little brother he never had, and for the first time in his life it didn’t annoy him so much that he had someone with him that wasn’t quite able to keep up. Ironically by the time Tails was fourteen he was the one running metaphorical circles around Sonic with his gadgetry talk. Tails has already built several vehicles, security systems, advanced computer networks and synthetic power crystals, amongst others, and may well prove genius that rival's Eggman's... if he can handle the pains of growing up, that is.
Knuckles the Echidna is one of the few surviving members of the Echidna race, a great martial artist, and the one charged by his heritage to guard the massive gem known as the Master Emerald, on Angel Island. This sort of charge means that he hasn’t left the island very often; in fact the only time he had were to find and retrieve the above mentioned Really Big Gem to bring it back. His education only went as far as the stored memories and information contained in the antiquarian mainframe of the ruins, and while the Echidnas left him all the information he would ever need, his lack of worldly experience this means he can be astoundingly naive at times. He also has more of a temper than the other members of his team, possibly a defense mechanism from his embarrassing tendency to be tricked by just about anyone.
Amy Rose is a pink female Hedgehog who is about sixteen years old, and claims to be totally in love with Sonic and that they are destined to be together. She first met him, fittingly, when he saved her from an out-of-control mech that was rampaging in the City. She’s bright, cheerful, driven, and in some ways similar to Sonic in her determination and outlook on life. This drive is, however, misguided: her declaration that he WILL marry her one day actually repels him, as Sonic is currently in a phase of his life where he’s violently allergic to commitment. She also follows Sonic wherever he goes, sometimes literally to the ends of the Earth, and this only serves to make him more nervous and puts herself in danger. It might be that she does this on purpose to have him save her over and over again, in the misguided hopes that it will endear her to him more. Nevertheless, he will never let her come to harm and she knows this. It means he DOES care about her in some capacity...
Princess Elise III is the current ruler of the kingdom of Soleanna. People consider her a beacon of purity--as pure as the sunlight, they actually say. It’s a role that comes naturally to her, as she can’t abide suffering, but there are times where she wishes she were able to act on her own without the impending role of queen hanging over her head. Despite the events that played through in the game, Eggman never really attacked her country, Sonic never really saved her, they never actually got close by the side of that lake, she was never able to let down the royal facade around someone who had nothing to gain by protecting her, Sonic never lost her to catastrophe and went through hell things to get her back, and in the end she was never forced to reverse the course of events that led to the attack in the first place. None of this actually happened. Still, that doesn’t stop Sonic from occasionally stopping in Solaris Square... Because he can’t help but feel like the place reminds him of something, something REALLY important, but what it is he just can’t summon to mind. And probably never will. You can’t remember what never actually happened after all.
Geography: The geography of Sonic's world is based loosely on Earth's, but the names and cultures of countries, the flora and fauna and the topography have changed considerably, to the point where very little remains of the twenty-first century that's identifiable. Major oceans and continents remain the same: the Americas, Asia, Africa and the Australian continent. Angel Island, the floating landmass that houses and protects the Master Emerald, used to be called Christmas Island and was located in the East Indian Ocean. Sonic himself grew up in what would be considered south Australia, but has since used the windfall from his adventures to build a kind of home base with Tails’ help, in the tropics further north. The Kingdom of Soleanna is what would have been parts of Thailand and the Malay Penninsula. The areas of the US, Canada, Japan and Mexico have, over centuries, assimilated into one country with new borders and affiliations.
Tech level: High. Holographic tech and solid light are commonplace, as well as fusion power, limited antigravity, and even teleportation (though the technology is still far too clumsy and expensive to implement widely). Oddly the aesthetics have "gone retro" in such a way that holographic supercomputers can play old games and antiquated OS's, and cars that run on fusion power look slightly boxy by today's standards.
Mobian Culture: Mobians mingle with humans perfectly, and there are only a handful of culture points that they don't share with humans. One is nicknames. They almost all have human-sounding given names but are quick to take up nicknames, at least amongst friends. Another is clothing... or lack thereof. Most, especially females, wear clothes to define their sense of style rather than for warmth or modesty. On a more intimate topic, it's not that unusual to find two Mobians of different species enter into a relationship together; It's CONSIDERABLY more unusual to find one between a Mobian and a human, and the idea is still highly controversial for Mobians and humans alike.
On the Echidnas: The Echidna nation was native to parts of old Indonesia and the Philippines. When Angel Island first took flight, the relative isolation allowed the Echidnas to quickly develop high civilization of their own, no doubt augmented by the power of the Master Emerald. They became prideful and sought to use the Master Emerald to take over the rest of the world, believing they were the one true masters of this planet. They stormed the shrine, trampling chao as they went. The god Chaos rose up and destroyed them in what's now called the Chaos Catastrophe, which eradicated most of the race. There are now very few left, and only one that lives on Angel Island, who is charged with protecting the Master Emerald for the duration of his lifetime. As a side note, even hundreds of years later the act of killing a chao is considered a horrible taboo, even if few people now know where the taboo came from.
Space Colony ARK: The Burnulli spherical orbital space station codenamed ARK was the brainchild of the Government collective, and was the cutting edge of technology at the time of its launch. At any one time it was home to just over a hundred residents. Several brilliant scientists did their best work in the variable-gravity environments the space station boasted, including biotech expert Dr. Gerald Robotnik. At first innocent, their collective research started to gain greater and greater destructive applications until the government took notice and seized the research. The colonists resisted and the colony was deactivated, killing most of them. The event was quickly covered up by the Government, and even after the events transpiring in the Sonic Adventure 2 storyline the space station still lies dark and dormant.
Dr. Ivo “Eggman” Robotinik: The “good doctor” is the latest in a long line of brilliant scientists with a sliding scale of morality and a gift for harnessing their discoveries to martial application. He’s best known for his terrorizing work in nanite robotization: tiny airbourne machines that rearrange living flesh into a mechanical counterpart; the affliction is painful and nearly unstoppable with the end-result robotic creature is programmed to be totally loyal to him. He’s made several other attempts to gambit for supreme power, using everything from captive god-creatures to giant lasers to sattelite-takeover of war-room computers. All while somehow avoiding capture from both private and military pursuers. Needless to say, he is by far more dangerous than the fat buffoon the games make him out to be.
(the rest are character bios that are mostly here to flesh out the world, and will be replaced by PC bios should the character be apped.)
Sir Charles Hedgehog: Sonic’s uncle, and the closest thing to a father figure in his life. He's a research scientist specializing in energy waveform conversion and power systems. He was quick to give up his research when it was confiscated and took to early retirement, and while Sonic did pick up a few things from him, he wasn't even aware of his uncle's work on the Chaos Emeralds until just before he himself gathered them all for the first time. Uncle Chuck is almost as mellow as Sonic is hyperactive, with a sense of humor about life that gives one the impression that already knows what's going to happen and just doesn't wanna spoil the ending.
Miles “Tails” Prower is a yellow fox-boy with two tails, whom Sonic took under his wing when he was nine and Sonic was fifteen. They'd met when Sonic found Tails in the middle of tinkering with an old biplane of Sonic's, that had nearly become a permanent fixture of the beach instead of any kind of air transportation. Apparantly the kit didn’t have much in the way of a home, either; Sonic saw him as the little brother he never had, and for the first time in his life it didn’t annoy him so much that he had someone with him that wasn’t quite able to keep up. Ironically by the time Tails was fourteen he was the one running metaphorical circles around Sonic with his gadgetry talk. Tails has already built several vehicles, security systems, advanced computer networks and synthetic power crystals, amongst others, and may well prove genius that rival's Eggman's... if he can handle the pains of growing up, that is.
Knuckles the Echidna is one of the few surviving members of the Echidna race, a great martial artist, and the one charged by his heritage to guard the massive gem known as the Master Emerald, on Angel Island. This sort of charge means that he hasn’t left the island very often; in fact the only time he had were to find and retrieve the above mentioned Really Big Gem to bring it back. His education only went as far as the stored memories and information contained in the antiquarian mainframe of the ruins, and while the Echidnas left him all the information he would ever need, his lack of worldly experience this means he can be astoundingly naive at times. He also has more of a temper than the other members of his team, possibly a defense mechanism from his embarrassing tendency to be tricked by just about anyone.
Amy Rose is a pink female Hedgehog who is about sixteen years old, and claims to be totally in love with Sonic and that they are destined to be together. She first met him, fittingly, when he saved her from an out-of-control mech that was rampaging in the City. She’s bright, cheerful, driven, and in some ways similar to Sonic in her determination and outlook on life. This drive is, however, misguided: her declaration that he WILL marry her one day actually repels him, as Sonic is currently in a phase of his life where he’s violently allergic to commitment. She also follows Sonic wherever he goes, sometimes literally to the ends of the Earth, and this only serves to make him more nervous and puts herself in danger. It might be that she does this on purpose to have him save her over and over again, in the misguided hopes that it will endear her to him more. Nevertheless, he will never let her come to harm and she knows this. It means he DOES care about her in some capacity...
Princess Elise III is the current ruler of the kingdom of Soleanna. People consider her a beacon of purity--as pure as the sunlight, they actually say. It’s a role that comes naturally to her, as she can’t abide suffering, but there are times where she wishes she were able to act on her own without the impending role of queen hanging over her head. Despite the events that played through in the game, Eggman never really attacked her country, Sonic never really saved her, they never actually got close by the side of that lake, she was never able to let down the royal facade around someone who had nothing to gain by protecting her, Sonic never lost her to catastrophe and went through hell things to get her back, and in the end she was never forced to reverse the course of events that led to the attack in the first place. None of this actually happened. Still, that doesn’t stop Sonic from occasionally stopping in Solaris Square... Because he can’t help but feel like the place reminds him of something, something REALLY important, but what it is he just can’t summon to mind. And probably never will. You can’t remember what never actually happened after all.
