Sorzo

Content Rating: E

Disclaimer: This short story is not intended to be canon to They Call Me Sonic. It was written as a conceptual exploration for Solaris with the understanding that the characterization therein would likely not be implemented. As it is set after the first season of the TCMS tabletop game, which is in-progress as of this posting, certain assumptions made by the writer may eventually contradict other aspects of the setting's canon.

 

Eye of Glass

 

Milly clutched her grandmother’s staff—her staff—nervously as she gazed up at the towering arched entryway before her. The opening, wrought of polished dark stone regularly inset with white gems of the same type as this place’s namesake, did not appear to have been attended to recently: a thick layer of brown and grey dust and detritus covered its surface, marring any glittering beauty the diamonds might otherwise have possessed. Even to her, someone who perhaps too seldomly paid heed to matters of cleanliness and aesthetics, it seemed off, suggesting that the interior of the cavernous structure beyond was long abandoned rather than the currently occupied dwelling that her Server had spoken of. Even the air, though breathable and temperate enough for one suited to colder climes, had a heavy, stagnant feel to it, as though it had not been disturbed in ages. The lack of any circulation in it was already unpleasant enough, and the polar bear feared that it would begin to feel outright smothering once she had ventured inside.

Then again, that there was even air present here at all was an impossibility, or at least it would have been if ‘here’ had been back in the Material Plane, what Milly still sometimes reflexively thought of as the real world despite herself. The world around her, made up not of atoms and compounds but energy coalesced into tangible form and substance through the will and design of he whom she currently sought out, was not subject to the laws of physics and chemistry as she knew them. In this case, that of the Diamond, her surroundings consisted of a small asteroid floating somewhere in the cosmos. All around her were pinpricks of starlight, but they seemed somehow cold, bereft of the reassuring warmth and wonder looking up at Isenvalk’s night sky had often offered her. The dim, distant sun was no different, while the faint sight of what she assumed was Earth, a barely visible marble of blue and green, left her feeling forlorn. Lonely.

It was strange, feeling this way. Ever since she was a little girl, she had dreamed about exploring the wonders of the universe, becoming a spacefaring adventurer like Luke Skywalker, James T. Kirk, and Captain Harlock. But actually being out in that vast expanse, even in abstract, made her acutely aware of how small and vulnerable she truly was. But then, her heroes had had their Han Solos and Princess Leias, their Mister Spocks and Doctor McCoys. She was alone, left to muse whether the presence and companionship of her friends would make such circumstances more palatable, an ultimately irrelevant question that gave way to one more meaningful.

What kind of person would choose to live in a place like this?

Her own Server dwelled in a luxurious aquatic paradise of her own making, a setting that had immediately seemed fitting for one of power and status. That impression had only been reinforced in the subsequent weeks as she continued to get to know the otter she now served. This, on the other hand…

Well…Queen Salasia did say that Solaris values his privacy. This seems a little extreme, but I can still relate to that, right? I don’t like to be disturbed when I’m in the middle of working or watching an anime, after all.

Of course, that begged a rather unpleasant question. If a disruption of desired solitude could cause her to become “a bit of a grump”, as Kalen had put it on more than one occasion, what would the reaction be of a Chaos lord who could wield near-absolute control over his domain and quite clearly was not hoping for visitors?

The staff pulsed in her hands, giving the sensation of pleasantly warm water, and she nodded at the reassurance. Like it or not, she had a mission to carry out. The small mountain the archway led into was the only feature of note she had found on the asteroid since Queen Salasia had teleported her to its surface what felt like an hour or so ago, and it matched the description she had been given. It had to be the place.

Taking a deep breath, Milly slowly stepped through the opening, doing her best not to dwell on the myriad memories of her last time inside a mountain. She instead tried to focus on her surroundings, which were difficult to make out even with Mobian eyesight. Soon the stone halls were bereft of even the faint illumination of starlight, leaving her in complete darkness.

“Umm…a little help, please?”

The end of her staff began to glow with cyan light, though for a moment it flickered, as though hesitant to answer such a feebly-intoned request. It was understandable, given that the polar bear normally wielded her “Magical Girl” powers like Usagi and the other Sailor Scouts did on TV, enthusiastically shouting specially worded commands such as “Staff of the Asterite, Cast Thine Illumination!” At the moment, however, she was simply not feeling up to it. There was no one to save or fight, no flood of adrenaline and determination. Just nervous fear.

Still, the luminance ultimately held and was sufficient for her to gauge her surroundings. The walls of the spacious corridors were as smooth, plain, and nondescript as those near the entrance, but as she resumed her course and headed deeper into the mountain their layouts gradually changed, giving way to carved shelves containing metallic cabinets. All were closed, and although her natural curiosity was not entirely eclipsed by inward reminders to remain respectful and cautious, Milly had the distinct impression that even if she attempted to risk a peek she would find them locked. Between the various shelves hung iron sconces, each containing a large silver crystal. From their arrangement, it seemed likely that they were meant to supply light, like the wall-mounted torches of old. That they remained dull and opaque was not a reassuring sign, though whether they simply required stimuli of some sort or were outright refusing to aid an intruder she could not say. Virtually anything was possible within a Server’s domain.

Presently she came to a split path consisting of two sets of stairs, one ascending and the other leading deeper into the heart of the asteroid. Both seemed equally worn, and there were no discernable labels, markings, footprints, or other indications to suggest which path to take.

At a loss, the young herald decided she had little to lose in announcing her presence. There was no real need for furtiveness, given her goal of meeting Solaris, and it seemed likely that he was already well-aware of her arrival. Granted, if that was the case he was unlikely to reveal himself now when he had hitherto chosen to remain secluded. Still, as Azriella and her family kept reminding her, it was important to be polite.

“H-hello? Excuse me, M-Mister Solaris? Are you there? My n-name is Milly. Queen Salasia sent me. M-might I please speak with you?”

There was no response, save the faint echoing of her raised voice that was soon swallowed up by the cavernous complex around her, leaving only silence and stillness.

“Right. Well, it was worth a shot, I guess,” she murmured, eyes drifting downward to her staff. “I don’t suppose you know the way, do you? Wait…actually, you just might…”

Closing her eyes, she raised the ancestral artifact slightly while tightly gripping it with both hands, focusing her thoughts until they were synchronized with its energies and then using it to amplify and extend her mental and spiritual awareness outward. It was difficult, taxing work, far more so than on the Material Plane or when training within the Andarra. The ephemeral Chaos energy around her was not of the form she was attuned to, and moving her senses through it was more akin to wading across a sea of molasses than one of clear waters. Still, she gradually made headway through the morass as she sought out concentrations of Chaos, first extending her mind upward and then, finding nothing that meaningfully stood out from the ambience, downward toward—

“Aaaagh!!!”

A brief flash of pain caused Milly to cry out as the connection was forcefully severed, like a door being slammed in her face. Opening her eyes, she found to her horror that the staff’s glow was sputtering out and frantically began doing everything she could think of to restore its radiance. Nothing worked; though her connection with the object remained, it felt like its energies were being suppressed by a far more powerful surrounding force. Soon the last glimmer faded, leaving her once again in darkness.

Even in the dark, I could probably find my way back outside from here. The path was linear enough. But…no, I can’t go back. Not yet. Queen Salasia wanted me to meet with Solaris, and I have to give it my best shot. He’s definitely here, at least…and definitely further down. Guess I’ll just have to be careful.

Creeping forward slowly and cautiously, the polar bear moved to the stairs leading downward and gingerly began the painstaking descent, step by step. She was able to feel against the walls for support, thankfully, while her staff doubled as a walking stick and mobility cane, letting her get a sense of what lay immediately before her. Still, it was a stressful, nerve-racking process, and the stagnant air soon began to weigh heavily on her anxiety, as she had feared.

He knows I’m here. Knows I’m here but doesn’t want me to be. He wants me gone. But…how far would he go to get rid of me? Would he try to kill me? Could he kill me when I’m like this, since my body’s back in Az’s house? Probably, at least for all intents and purposes…and if he wanted to, I couldn’t do anything to stop it. Even Queen Salasia probably couldn’t; as powerful as she is, he’s supposed to be at least her equal, and this is his realm. Did she make a mistake by sending me here? They’re supposed to know one another, but it also sounds like it’s been a very long time since they last spoke…

The prospect of her newfound benefactor being unable to intervene in time on her behalf was deeply unsettling, and Milly began to realize that she had come to depend on the otter queen more than she liked to admit.

Still, even if her Server was cut off from her, it did not mean she was truly alone. Faith was something she struggled with at times, and hers certainly did not burn as brightly as that of Kalen or the Jensens. But she still had it, and it was something she could hold onto, even here in the dark.

“Though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me.”

She had experienced firsthand the truth in those words just two months prior, in the heart of Doomsday. If anywhere could be described as a valley of shadow and death, it had been that place and its host of horrors. Providence had seen her through safely then, and she had to trust that the same would be true now.

That’s right, Milly. It’s…it’s going to be okay. You’ve made it through worse than this. Way worse. This is…this is just a social call on behalf of your boss, really. That’s probably something normal people do sometimes, right? Besides, nothing so far has been dangerous, it’s just a little darkness. Darkness from a hermit who likes to keep his lights off. I guess it’s not so much the Valley of the Shadow of Death as it is the Valley of the Shadow of Grumpin—

Another step, and suddenly the wall she had been putting much of her weight against was no longer there. She stumbled forward, slipped, found herself falling amidst nothingness…and before she could so much as scream, there was the sound of air being displaced nearby, as though from the beating of an enormous pair of wings, and she was caught by something soft—organic?—yet firm. The absolute black around her soon became a dimly lit haze, and a few moments later she was dropped not altogether gently upon the ground a few feet below.

Milly’s dizzied vision swam briefly before clearing, at which point she found herself in a very large chamber that bore ample signs of habitation. A number of tables were set against the edges of the room, many with stools next to them. Along the walls were various cabinets and shelves, the latter supporting a myriad manner of mechanical objects in what looked to be various states of completion, as well as more of the sconces she had seen before, though the crystals within these radiated the pale, soft light by which she could again see. The illumination was faintly reflected by the walls and floor, which were of the same make as the diamond-inset polished stone of the entryway but in much better condition. The only piece of furniture she could see that did not appear to be composed of stone or metal was an enormous bookcase shaped from green-blue coral, at least three meters wide and stretching higher toward the unseen ceiling than she could make out in the current level of light, each of its countless shelves tightly packed with tome after tome.  

In total, the space came across as something of a personal workshop. It looked much older and, admittedly, significantly tidier than her former one back in Isenvalk, but it still reminded her of that beloved haven…though any comfort the similarities might have provided was offset by the sense of scale. Like the bookcase, everything here was massive, as though crafted for a being several times her size. And if that were the case…

She gulped, looking up at the towering silhouette that loomed unmoving before her. It was at least seventeen, perhaps eighteen feet tall and looked vaguely avian, but she could make out little more than that; the light of the chamber inexplicably seemed to stop short of the figure in every direction, though near its top there was a periodic faint gleaming from what, judging by its position, might have been a single eye.

“H-hello? M-Mister S-Solaris, sir?”

“Go away,” a croaking voice replied. It was loud but not thundering as she had expected, with a wizened, raspy quality to it, as well as something that recalled the crisp, precise turning of clock gears. She could not detect any genuine anger in his tone, but the irritation was more than palpable, and after a moment he turned away, the gleam disappearing.

“Please, wait!” the polar bear protested, getting to her feet. “Thank you for saving me. My name is M-Milly, and I’ve b-been sent here by—”

“I heard you the first time, little herald, and even had I not, your allegiance would have been obvious enough. Your presence is suffused with her aura, to say nothing of that token you carry. Now scurry on back to your master and tell that meddlesome busybody that nothing has changed as far as I am concerned. Barriers or no Barriers, I still wish to be left alone, even by her.”

His irreverent dismissal of the being to whom she owed so much irked her, and without thinking Milly found herself talking back.

“You shouldn’t talk about her like that! Queen Salasia’s a great woman! I’ll admit I was a bit wary of her when I first met her, but since then—”

She was cut off by a sharp snort, though whether it carried any real amusement was difficult to say.

“Child, I am a Chaos Server in the heart of his own domain. There is only one being in all of existence whom I may not talk about however I please, and the Asterite is most certainly not He…though to her credit she has always known that, unlike some among the Seven. I certainly bear her no ill will, if that is your concern. And as for you…”

The figure turned around again and slowly crouched down. As he did so, the chamber’s illumination at last began to touch his features, giving Milly her first real look at Solaris, Chaos Server of the Diamond. He was a crow, ancient-looking yet without any hint of frailty about him, his long yet neatly trimmed white beard and the tufts of matching hair visible beneath his drawn cowl a stark contrast to his beak and feathers of midnight black. He was clad in silver hooded robes fastened by a white cord at the waist, though his taloned feet were left bare. Folded behind him were wings of dark crystal, their facets twinkling with glimpses of light in a manner that reminded her of the starry expanse visible outside the mountain. And his eyes…

The polar bear scarcely managed to suppress a gasp upon seeing that the avian’s right eye, clouded, faded, and unfocused, was blind, while the socket of the left was occupied by a glass orb, the source of the gleaming she had espied amidst his silhouette. The orb shifted up and down as he studied her, and she realized that whatever its nature it offered the lens through which he still viewed the world.

“…I will grant that your loyalty is perhaps commendable, but that reckless tongue does both you and the one you attempt to defend the honor of a disservice, and not all of the Servers would allow it to move so without reprisal. Oh, do stop fidgeting and sweating like that, I am not going to harm you. I do not make a habit of killing needlessly—I desire isolation, not bloodshed—and when I do feel darker inclinations, seldom do they extend toward the agents of old allies.”

“Then…you’ll listen to what I have to say?”

He did not reply for a moment, though when he did speak his glass eye carried a glow that was more than mere reflection.

“Answer Truly: If I say no and continue to do so, what will you do?”

“Keep trying until you relent and listen to me, I suppose. Queen Salasia asked me to speak with you about something, and I really don’t want to disappoint her.”

Her words immediately came of their own accord, unbidden and formed neither by conscious thought nor emotional impulse, drawn out instead by the power and will of he who had posed the question. After they had left her lips, Milly closed her eyes and shook her head, surprise and confusion quickly replaced by realization and a mixture of wariness and awe.

For his part, Solaris gave a deep sigh of resignation.

“It would seem you truly have her diligence…and stubbornness…for better or for worse. I can of course throw you out if I wish, send your spirit back its body in the Material in a heartbeat and ward the Diamond so that no amount of effort on Salasia’s part will allow you to return. Were you the emissary of anyone else, I would most likely do just that. But…I suppose I ought to humor her and let you try to carry out your errand.”

The glass eye shifted for a moment in the direction of the coral bookcase.

“…I owe her that much…”

At Milly’s smile the eye swiveled back toward her, accompanied by a narrowed brow.  

“Make no mistake, I am not acquiescing to anything save a brief exchange of words. If and when you deliver the proposition I know full well you have been entrusted to bring on her behalf, I can assure you that the answer will be a flat refusal, and I rather doubt there is an argument either of you can conjure that can change that. For your part…Mildrid, was it?”

“Milly, sir.”

“Quite. For your part, Mildrid, I ask two things. The first is that you do not touch anything without express permission; were you to break anything here, you would swiftly find yourself trying to return to your body from across the cosmic void…not a pleasant excursion, I am told. The second is that you endeavor to at least display a more agreeable personality than Salasia’s other current champion. If I am to be subjected to multiple conversations within a single century, I would at least have them be relatively tolerable.”

“Other champion…you mean my friend Ecco? You know her?”

Another snort, this one decidedly bereft of any trace of amusement.

“The Cetani, yes…though if you call that one friend, I am already beginning to question my decision to suffer this discussion.”

“If…if you don’t mind my asking, sir, what happened? Did Queen Salasia send Ecco here to talk with you first?”

The crow rose to his considerable full height and began slowly moving over to one of the stools near the edge of the room, speaking as he did so.

“I do in fact mind…though it is not your fault that the matter was an…unpleasant one. Suffice it to say that time is part of my domain, and I am not overly enthused when people decide to start meddling with its currents, however justified their intentions may seem to them.”

He sat down facing her, gesturing to another stool nearby for her to do the same. But as Milly walked up to the piece of furniture, it became evident that such a normally effortless act would pose a challenge, given that everything here was scaled for use by a giant over thrice her height. She was used to being short by the standards of humans and many Mobians, but in this case she felt as though she were somewhere between a Hobbit and a Lilliputian. A more dexterous, less heavyset individual would likely have had little difficulty climbing atop the stool, but such an attempt was more likely to leave her sprawled out on the floor with a sore back.

She turned to Solaris, intending to ask him for help, but the words died in her throat as she took in his analytical one-eyed gaze.

This is a test, isn’t it? He’s evaluating my ability to solve a problem.

She thought it through for a moment, then looked up at her host, a tentative solution in her mind’s eye.

“I think you kept me from using my staff properly earlier. May I please use its powers again?”

At his wordless nod, the polar bear withdrew the small container of water she kept on her person and poured it onto the ground near the stool. Taking her staff, she then reached out with its power, manipulating the puddle into a thin cylinder before freezing it and stepping onto the small platform of ice she had created.

“Waters of the Asterite, rise!”

 At her words, the platform began to slowly ascend, moving upward until it was high enough for her to hop off onto the now-level top of the stool. A final flick of her staff caused the ice to dissolve and flow back into her container, and as she sealed it and sat down she looked back up at the Server, who offered a grouchy “Hmph!” that she hoped contained at least some measure of hidden approval.

“So…you can control time? Or travel through it?”

The giant closed his eyes and rubbed his brow, now seeming weary and even older than before.

“It would be more accurate to say that time controls me. It controls you as well, of course, as it does all mortals, but for me…for me it is different. I am bound to it, stretched nigh-infinitely in two directions: backward and forward, past and future. There is only a single present at any given moment, but my awareness is split between it and five minutes ago and five minutes from now…an hour ago and from now…a year…a millennium…”

“Wait…are you saying that you’re…oh, what was that word that Kalen used…omniscient?”

“No, no…such a thing is the province of God alone. Still, I once possessed something beginning to approximate it, you might say. I did not know everything, but I could find virtually anything out if I so chose. Any bit of knowledge that existed, past, present, or future, within the current Cycle was revealed to me if I sought it out. As you might expect, I considered myself very wise. How very wise indeed…Ha!”

His short, sharp laugh struck her as being utterly devoid of any mirth.

“But that was many, many Cycles ago. Much of my sight was…taken from me….” He opened his eyelids again, revealing the glass orb that looked down at her and the faded eye that could not, the faint glimpse of silver-blue upon its foggy surface the only hint of any hue across his entire being. “…taken by the Mistress of Shadows for the sake of her intrigues and secrets.”

A shudder ran down Milly’s spine as she recalled the otherworldly conversation in her basement.

“You…you’re talking about Helena, aren’t you? The ruler of the Amythyst.”

“That is the name she now fancies, yes, though it was not always so. We have had many names, all of us, over the eons…over the Cycles...many names and many forms. For a long, long while, she took the form of a friend…and eventually more than that. That I did not suspect her machinations until she struck shows how blinded I already was. Deceit is in her nature, just as pride, I acknowledged too late, is in mine.”

The polar bear huddled her arms around her torso in pensive thought, her mind drifting back to the tense standoff with Artiem in her living room.

“That’s so sad…to be betrayed by one you were so close to…”

Another snort.

“Do not pity me, child, I am too old for it. Such events are ancient history even by my standards, dozens of turns of The Wheel past. I doubt she herself remembers them.”

“What do you mean? I don’t really understand much about these…um…Cycles, but I thought the Servers retained their memories from one to the next.”

“Only to an extent. While we are unlike those mortals who make the transition from one Cycle to the next in that we retain almost all of who we are, our personalities, knowledge, memories, the other six are subject to a degree of…erosion. They lose a bit of themselves each time things reset. They are not atrophying or anything of the sort—experiences accumulated over the course of a cycle outweigh those lost at the start of one—but they are changing, slowly but surely. Though we do not age, it is not entirely different from how you are not the same person you were as a very small child and do not remember everything from those days. Time’s passage has caused you to grow in mind as well as body, but things are nonetheless lost in the transition.”

“You talk of the other six as though you are separate. Are you not affected by all this?”

His beak twisted in a bitter smile.

“Would that I were. But though it was forever damaged, some of my sight remains. The parts of me that exist in the future are effectively blind,” he said, raising a finger to his clouded right eye. “I can at times feel things, impressions and emotions, the thoughts of others, but they are vague, without context. But the past…” The finger moved to the glass orb on his left. “The past I am still connected to well enough. The many secrets of the universe, that knowledge which is jealously guarded by the Amythyst, I am no longer privy to, but all else within this Cycle’s history I can see much as I did before. And before this Cycle…”

He trailed off for several long moments, and when his voice returned it was little more than a whisper, steeped in sadness.

“…before this Cycle, though I cannot look beyond my own experiences, I remember. I remember everything, Mildrid, as though it was happening at this very moment. I remember waking up for the first time, freshly created, before the Most High near the dawn of time. I remember watching as He made the other six Servers, meeting them, each of us growing closer as the years advanced. The end of the very first Cycle and beginning of the second, how they were still the same and yet not. The beginnings of our petty bickerings and squabbles as sin’s taint infected us one by one. The feuds and alliances we, who were designed to be in perfect harmony, made with another. The betrayals and wars. The creation of an eighth Emerald designed to isolate us from one another, its destruction and reforging time and again across the ages. And I remember looking upon my old friends…the only six in all of existence, all time and history, who were like me…and seeing next to nothing in any of them of who they had been at the start. They…had forgotten…”

Milly found herself wiping away tears, and to her surprise when she looked back up she saw Solaris doing the same.

“It is perhaps a foolish sentiment…certainly a pointless one, but…I envy you, child. Your youth and innocence, your naivete. Yours is a New Soul, fresh and unburdened by even the unconscious weight of past lives in past Cycles. You will go on to live your life, learning, growing, and loving, and when the time comes for it to end, you will either await the Wheel’s next turn or escape it entirely, the Grace I can see upon your heart allowing you to be with our Creator. And when that escape comes, whether it be tomorrow or millennia from now, I will still be here, bound to this unending, unforgetting fate.”

Silence fell between them for a time, the polar bear looking down at the floor far below, idly rubbing the ancestral ring upon her finger.

“I’m sorry…I know you don’t want me to be, but…” she trailed off with a helpless shrug, one met with a cock of the Server’s beaked visage.

“Another foolish, pointless sentiment…but I thank you for it and am sorry as well. I am all too intimately familiar with the pain that can come from knowledge of others, and now I have inflicted the very same upon you. It would be easy to dismiss it as solicited, a consequence of your intrusion and questions, yet perhaps I simply needed to get the matter off my chest once more. It has been quite some time since I last did so. Still, that is no excuse for my failure to know when things are best left unsaid. Isolation, it seems, has taken its toll on my social graces.”

Milly managed a sad smile.

“I’m a little bit like that too, actually. Conversing with others is…difficult…for me, sometimes. My friends will say that I’m talking too much, or not enough, or saying things I shouldn’t. People I don’t know well usually don’t do that, but instead they’ll just sort of…stare. Like they’re judging me or think I’m offputting or something. I still don’t really know how I should deal with those silences. You did surprise me a little by revealing as much as you did…I don’t think most people would have…but I really don’t mind. It’s easier for me to understand data when it’s clearly delineated and I don’t have to make inferences and base conclusions around conjecture.”

The glass eye glittered as it studied her, leaving the herald to wonder whether she had been talking too much just then. The avian’s expression was difficult to read.

“From my perspective, I was not revealing anything. I have nothing I particularly wish to keep hidden—save my location, a rather moot point in your case—and care little for the secrets and intrigues that so captivate Helena’s heart. My nature is known well enough to those aware of my existence to begin with. Were you to ask the other Servers about me, each would likely supply largely the same information as what you just heard, though their words would be colored by differing perspectives. When last I looked upon their hearts, I found that they saw me with eyes of contempt, irritation, irreverence, apathy, utility…and pity.” The Server gave a deep, rumbling sigh and rubbed his brow. “Yes, the last stems from the one you now serve, little Mobian, and in some ways it is the hardest of all to bear. Salasia embraces change, the willingness to let go, and it is my inability to so adapt from one Cycle to the next that she pities. She is ever the most affected, the most altered, by The Wheel’s turns, and by our standards her memory is not a long one. Yet the compassion in her heart is as old and deeply rooted as it is strong, stretching back far beyond her earliest recollections. She alone of the others would now call me friend. Not peer, not ally, but friend.”

“So…why have you isolated yourself from Queen Salasia along with everyone else? I understand wanting be alone sometimes, but everyone needs friends, right?”

“Her offers are often tempting, I will concede, and for a time I took them, letting her get close whilst keeping all else at arm’s length. But her view of friendship toward me, though genuine, is the relationship between a caretaker and an old dotard, not equals. That rankled me, and though I suffered it, in the end I found that I could not bear her continued changes from one Cycle to the next. She would still see me as a friend, but she would not be the friend I knew, with more and more of our shared history becoming forever limited to my memories as those precious moments of laughter and companionship were lost to hers.”

The crow turned upon his stool toward the adjacent table and began tinkering with something upon it, though from her current angle Milly could not see above its rim.

“Still…she remains persistent, which brings us to you being here, Mildrid. Tell me, am I correct in assuming that you were sent here with a request from Salasia for me to meet with her? That she would have me join her not merely in friendship but duty, that the balance of the world is in jeopardy and I am needed to once more act as mediator among the Servers?”

Milly blinked, surprised at his astuteness. If he knew what was at stake, why was he still isolated like this?

“Well…yes, sir. The Soviets have conquered my former home and have access to the ley lines there. With the Master Emerald shattered, Queen Salasia fears that—”

She was interrupted by bitter laughter.

“The Soviets? Mere motes of dust in the wind. Their kind almost always rise to prominence several times over the course of a Cycle, but seldom will a single movement last longer than a mere century, perhaps two. Even by the ephemeral standards of nations they are fleeting, destructive and imposing though they might seem in the moment.”

“’Might seem?’ People like Jaeger and his followers are evil! They conquer and kill innocents, bringing nothing but misery! I don’t really even understand politics, but even I can see that! Why can’t you?”

“You mistake my lack of concern for approval. I do not condone the violent actions of such extremists, but I do see them in a larger context that most mortals fail to. Movements, countries, empires…they come and go, rise and fall, whether they be communist, democratic, or monarchical. Lives are caught up and consumed in their wakes, but the grave dug today is simply one not dug tomorrow. Anyone slain by this Jaeger or those like him would have died soon enough anyway.”

Milly clenched a fist, glaring at the giant. She had genuinely felt sorry for him before, but to hear him be so dismissive of everything she had just been through, and what so many others were still experiencing, was infuriating. Still, she held her tongue as he continued.

“The rest of what you describe is much the same, just on a larger scale. The negation of the Master Emerald and removal of its Barriers is a comparatively rare thing, not guaranteed to happen within a given Cycle. To the other Servers it seems a momentous occasion that they have only experienced a few times, one ripe with possibility. But I have seen the Barriers come and go many, many times, and while the initial aftermath of their disappearance does vary, in broad strokes the process tends to fall into one of a number of patterns. Some are relatively peaceful, others see periods of great upheaval, culminating in eventual stability or the start of a new Cycle. If the planet’s ley lines are indeed being tampered with, it may well prove to be the latter.” He grimaced. “The horrors of Spirit World’s darker recesses being unleashed upon the Material Plane has a tendency of triggering the reset, after all. Should that happen, Mildred, I would advise petitioning Salasia to take you into the Andarra for those last few days. It would be far more…comfortable…than the alternative.”

“HOW CAN YOU EVEN SAY THAT?!” The polar bear snapped, getting to her feet and leveling an accusing finger at the old crow. “You talk about lives like they don’t even matter! About wars and…and the end of the world as though they’re pointless! Don’t you even care?!”

“OF COURSE I CARE, SALASIA! THAT IS PRECISELY THE PROBLEM!” Solaris was on his feet in an instant, drawn to his full height and crystalline wings outstretched, the hood of his robes whipping back as his deafening voice thundered throughout the room with the force of an earthquake. Tables rattled and a number of objects fell from their wall-mounted shelves as columns of gravel and dust cascaded from the ceiling. Milly’s stool was knocked over and with a scream she careened toward the floor, hitting it hard and feeling the wind knocked out of her. Even when she tried to rise a moment later, she found herself unable to, though not due to any sort of injury. It felt as if an avalanche of invisible rocks had descended upon her, pinning her in place as the pressure continued to build, slowly crushing her.

For the first time since escaping Doomsday, Milly felt sheer, absolute terror.

Please, God…please don’t let…me…

Then the pressure was gone and the shaking room went still. With a shuddering cough, the young herald managed to force air back into her lungs, after which she lay there for a time, still save for her breathing as she tried to recover. When she did look up, she found Solaris crouching over her, hood drawn once more, his expression contrite and crestfallen.

“Mildrid? Mildrid, are…are you alright?”

“I…think so…just—ouch! Just sore…”

The Server gingerly picked her up with both hands and carried her over to the table where he had been sitting. After laying the polar bear down upon its surface, he dismissively waved a hand behind his head, causing the other effects of his outburst to be reversed like a video being rewound in a VCR. Objects flew back to their shelves and Milly’s stool reoriented itself, while bits of dust and rock ascended toward the ceiling, leaving the floor once again spotless.

“I am deeply, deeply sorry about that, dear child,” Solaris sighed as he collapsed back onto his stool, looking and sounding very tired. “It was most unintentional. At times, I…I lose myself, you see. As I have said, my memories are so vivid as to be nigh indistinguishable from the present. On occasion, even after all this time, when the now becomes similar enough to a certain moment within the then…that very fine line between the two disappears.”

“You…called me Salasia. Does that mean—?”

“Yes. That final question you posed, whether…whether I even care…” He closed his eyes. “She asked me that during our last meeting, not long before the Barriers rose. She had come here for much the same purpose as she now sends you, seeking my aid in various matters. When I refused, she lashed out in frustration, and I did the same in kind. It was not a serious fight, of course, nor our first, but even an argument of words between two Chaos Servers can be devastating if it gets heated enough, as I am sure you can now imagine, and that was our worst in eons.”

He cracked open his working eye, a ghost of a smile appearing on his features, the first genuine one she had seen from him.

“You are quite resilient for one so small. That ounce of my power would have inflicted serious injury or worse upon most mortals, even heralds, and when I realized what had happened I initially expected to have to reverse the effects. I could still do so, of course, if you desire.” At the shake of her head he nodded, the glimpse of glass vanishing. “With both of us venting upon the other, half the mountain had been leveled by the time Salasia departed. The damage to it was of no consequence, but as years passed I was left to wonder whether our relationship would be so easily repaired…and whether I truly even wanted it to be. Then the Master Emerald was remade, cementing our separation. Your arrival is the first I have heard from her since that day. Strange that she should opt to leap directly back into the sort of matter that soured our last meeting, it is unlike her. She usually chooses to lead with an olive branch. Perhaps she is desperate.”

“Queen Salasia did seem rather anxious when she sent me here. Maybe part of it was due to you two having parted on bad terms…that was the case with my grandmother and I just before she disappeared for a long time, and I really regretted it deep down until we finally saw each other again…but things are pretty awful in the world right now, with signs suggesting they’re about to get much, much worse. I’m not very good with metaphors, but it’s like…it’s like we’re experiencing the first few flakes of a huge blizzard that’s yet to fully burst but will at any moment. Can’t you help us?”

“I am sorry, Mildrid. Truly, I am. But…I cannot bear to be dragged down the path of involvement again. Were I to do so, it would likely be millennia before I would manage to fully extricate myself from the affairs of the world once more. As I said, I do care, and with that caring comes pain. My heart would invariably become invested in the affairs of the world and the people living in it. I would become fond of individuals and watch over them, cultivate acolytes and appoint heralds as I have so many times before over the long march of time. And that march would claim all of them without exception, in one manner or another, leaving them to be either remade unremembering or sent to their eternal destinations, beyond my sight. Only the other members of the Seven would remain, and to be among them cuts the deepest. No, little one, I am cursed with far, far too many memories as it is. I have no wish to make more.”

“But you could still do so much good! Make the world a better place and help the lives of people while they last! Doesn’t that matter, at least?”

Solaris leaned his head back, staring up into the dark at something unseen or perhaps nothing at all.

“None of it matters. You yourself are new to me, Mildrid, but I have had variations of this conversation hundreds of times across dozens of Cycles. Some, as I alluded to, were with Salasia. Many were with her emissaries, individuals like you. Some were with different members of the Seven, and others still were with their followers. In each, I was appealed to, asked to assist with some matter and given justifications for why I should do so. In most of those cases I refused…but not all. At times I consented and begrudgingly left my haven, amassing the courage to try once more and immerse myself in the evanescent seas of the other planes. And yes, in some of those cases I helped…for an eyeblink, supplying mediation, averting crises, ‘making the world better.’ But the world never stayed that way. Death took those I saved, wars fractured bonds I had mended, the onset of new Cycles wiped away all that had been built.”

The old crow looked back down at her, his countenance severe.

“And those were the more successful cases. I am not God, my influence and intervention not infallible. On numerous occasions I gave my all, and even in the short term my efforts were for naught. Apocalyptic wars were waged between my kin or the Material Plane consumed itself in nuclear fire or the floodgates of the Underworld were loosed.”

Perhaps due to Milly’s horrified expression, his own then softened.  

“Conversely, there were times when my aid was beseeched, when it was said that the Cycle would surely end without my help, I refused…and the crisis in question was averted anyway, whether through the influence of the other Servers, the efforts of Man and Mobian, or simply the work of Providence. I am not telling you these things so that you may succumb to despair or nihilism; I do not wish for you or anyone else to become like me. When you leave this place without me, know that the coming storm may yet be averted, leaving you and those you hold dear to live long, fruitful, happy lives. Know that the potential you yourself have in contributing to that aversion should not be underestimated. But also know that for one such as I, it ultimately makes no difference. The only choices that truly matter are those that guide souls to their final fates, and such things are beyond my jurisdiction.”

“But you can make a difference, even if you yourself won’t really benefit. Isn’t that selfish? I mean, isn’t this your duty?”

The glass orb swiveled in a complete rotation, the single eye rolling with enough force to more than account for its still counterpart.

“I have been alive for longer than you can possibly truly fathom, child. And for most of that time, I did perform my duties, at great personal expense. I should think I am entitled to some measure of selfishness at this point. Or do you spend every waking instant of your life actively working toward Salasia’s directives of purification and cleansing?”

Milly frowned in surprise, not sure whether to feel guilty at the accusation.

“Well, no…but I still perform my duties when I need to. It’s why I’m here now. I haven’t just given up.”

“Nor should you. A certain apostle, nearing the end of his life, once boasted that he had kept the faith up until the very end, fighting the good fight and finishing his race. He was right to do so, for he was a great man after his eyes were opened. You should strive to be able to say the same on your own deathbed. But for me…there is no crown of righteousness to look forward to, no great reward. At least, none that I can see. My race goes on and on, and for some time now I have felt that it has gone on longer than I can endure. I know academically that the Cycles are not infinite, that one day The Wheel will at last be broken, never to turn again, and the yoke of time taken from me and unmade. But it feels like a matter of faith at this point, faith that I have failed to keep. Be grateful that you are not me. Be grateful that the race the Most High has set before you is so short.”

“You sound…well…bitter, sir. Is that…is that really how you feel toward God?”

The Server sighed, looking down toward his clawed feet.

“Perhaps it is, yes, at times, though I know it to be wrong. I suppose, though, that if anyone is truly to be blamed it is myself. Like the others of my kind, I was given a charge, a purpose, and though some of them have lost their way, become twisted, I am the only one who so struggles to live with himself. I could keep trying, learn to adapt and let go of the past. You yourself are here on behalf of someone who still believes I can do just that, who would help me and be my friend even though I do not deserve it. But I do not.”

He coughed several times, a great wind coming from his beak that, though partially blocked by his arm and largely aimed downward, was still enough to blow the polar bear’s teal hair backward.

“And now, Mildrid, I must ask you to leave my realm. I have spoken quite enough for now, I think. Go back to your master with a heart unburdened by feelings of failure, knowing that you did the best you could. Give her my apologies…and my thanks. My thanks for not giving up on me.” He offered her a sad smile. “May your life be a long and merry one. You do indeed seem an agreeable sort.”

A long, somber moment passed before Milly nodded, crestfallen despite his assurances, wanting to argue more, to find some means of convincing him to give the world, to give living, another chance but finding no words which seemed sufficient. This was clearly a very old wound, one that likely transcended the limits of her possible understanding. It was not some computational problem that could be answered with enough logic or a damaged part that could be repaired via sufficient research and experimentation. She was dealing with a person, ancient and impossibly complex, and if Queen Salasia in all her wisdom had proven unable to sway him, what could one such as she realistically hope to achieve when normal individuals consistently proved to be beyond her?

The polar bear clambered to her feet, coughing herself as she shifted her still-sore body upright and prompting Solaris to peer down at her.

“Would you care for some water before you leave? Salasia will not be able to retrieve you until reach the surface, and though you will now find the route illuminated, it is not a particularly short distance for one of your stature.” At her nod, he looked upward and spoke in a firm, commanding voice. “Noctua, Columba! Bring drink for our visitor and I!”

Milly presently heard the sound of whirring and clanking, and a moment later two mechanical birds of disparate sizes came fluttering down from the direction of the unseen ceiling, both carrying clay cups of commensurate measurement. The much larger of the two, an owl, hovered in front of Solaris long enough for him to take his drink, after which it alighted on the Server’s shoulder, staring down at her with gleaming golden eyes. Its counterpart, a dove, set down on the table in front of the polar bear, nudging the cup it had deposited forward with its head before looking up to study her as well.

“I hope you will find the quality of the water to your liking. I deem it serviceable, but typically servants of the Asterite are rather particular when it comes to—”

“AMAZING!!!”

“—hm?”

Milly was beside herself as she looked upon the two artificial avians before her, all thoughts of soreness, water, and her sobering discussion with the Server momentarily forgotten as she darted this way and that to get a good look at the dove from every angle she could. Like the owl, the bird was covered in bronze-colored plating, though she could not be sure whether that was the actual material employed. Visible along the undersides of its wings and along its breast were various shifting gears, springs, and pistons all working in tandem to produce lifelike motions, though to her surprise—and fascination—she saw no trace of wires or servomotors. As she did so, her mouth ran a mile a minute, verbalizing the sudden flood of thoughts upon her mind as fast as it possibly could.

“Hi there! I’m Milly! Well, my name is technically Mildred, but I really don’t prefer when people use that. What’s your name? I’m guessing you’re Columba, right? Since that means ‘dove’ in Latin? What are you made of? Bronze? Copper? Synthetic alloy? Metal unique to this realm? I don’t see any wiring, are you really a Clockwork robot? If so, that’s incredible! I thought applications of that kind of technology this advanced were only theoretical! Are you self-perpetuating? I’m into electrically powered robots myself. I mean, not into them into them…well, mostly; there is this one android friend of mind I really do like, but I’m still not sure whether he feels the same way. There’s this dance coming up at school and he still hasn’t said anything. Granted, he’s not technically a student there, and realistically we’d have to break in after hours because dancing together in public would expose him to the general populace when he’s supposed to be a secret due to being wanted by various cutthroat international parties, to say nothing of the violation of numerous assumed social taboos that would lead to relentless mockery, shunning, and persecution by those opposed to organic-machine relationships…”

“Mildrid.”

“…my roommate Az says I should just take the first step at this point and ask him, but I get so nervous and sweaty when I think about it! Hey, you don’t talk much. Do you lack a vocabulator? That’s okay, I won’t judge! We can still be friends regardless of the sophistication of your intelligence, though I am kinda curious as to your level of cognizance. Can you understand me? Blink once for yes, twice for no. Wait, I haven’t determined whether you can blink. Can you blink? Blink once for yes and stamp your right foot a little for no…”

“Mildrid…”

Upon hearing his him, she looked up at Solaris, though her verbal cascade was merely redirected, not abated.

“Oh, right! Almost forgot you were standing there for a sec. Did you make these two? Do you have any more? Not that I don’t think these two are fascinating, they absolutely are, I’m just curious. I knew this was a workshop! I had one like it back in my old home village, but it kinda…blew up. Not my fault, long story! Metal and I have been getting one set up in Az’s basement, but some of the tools are surprisingly hard to come by. Hey, do Noctua and Columba utilize Chaos energy in their designs? If so, can I supply that type of power myself even though I’m connected to the Andarra and not the Diamond? If not and they’re fully mechanical, I have a lot of questions, like how did you solve the—?”

“MILDRID!”

The sound of a Chaos Server’s raised voice was enough to at last halt the hypervocalizing polar bear’s enthusiastic frenzy, and after actually looking at him and his raised eyebrows for a long heartbeat, she realized too late that she had her arms wrapped around the rather confused-looking mechanical dove in a tight hug. A half-remembered threat concerning the cosmic void echoing through her mind, she hurriedly disengaged herself and turned toward her host, wringing her hands sheepishly.

“Sorry! I’m so sorry! It’s just…you see…well, when they I saw them and this one landed right next to me, I…” she stammered before at last taking a deep breath and finishing. “I like robots. I really, really like robots.”

“I gathered,” the old crow replied dryly. “I must admit, your degree of enthusiasm for automata surprises me. Most mortals view the subject with apathy, superficial interest stemming more from novelty or fanciful imaginings than fact, or through the lenses of profit or utility. Your passion, conversely, seems both deep-rooted and bolstered by some measure of experience.”

“Yes, sir. I’ve been into computers and robotics since I was little. I used to have my own workshop where I’d tinker and experiment with pretty much any bits of tech I could get my hands on, and eventually I became skilled enough to do repairs and odd jobs to get by, though the money’s more of a necessary perk than anything. Still, I never got a chance to interact with anything really advanced until recently, during the events that led to me meeting Queen Salasia, and the robots I met then are quite different from these. So I, um, got a little excited…”

Solaris leaned forward, inscrutably studying Milly closely for over a minute in silence. Eventually, however, a small smile settled upon his features.

“In light of your professional experience, I suppose I can forego having you take the roundabout way back to your body, despite your rash behavior. Yes, I did build these two. Time may be the cornerstone of my domain, but it is not the full extent of it. Crafting and invention fall within its sphere as well, and those aspects have seen me through much of my seclusion. Automata such as these do not age and I can keep them from falling into disrepair indefinitely, so they keep me company. As to whether I have more…”

He gestured toward behind Milly and she turned around, mouth dropping as she took in the contents of the table she was on for the first time. It was covered in parts, tools, and clockwork machines in various states of assembly. A quick scan of the other tables and shelves throughout the room, now more visible from this elevated height, revealed much the same.

“This is just my work room,” Solaris added, a hint of pride in his voice. “Most of the completed models are elsewhere in the mountain.”

“YOU…ARE…SO…COOL….”

“Hmph! I have heard that curious bit of vernacular across a number of Cycles, but for someone to actually refer to me as such…that is a rare first.”

The excited young herald glanced back at the crow, who nodded in consent and watched as she hurried over to inspect the assembled objects on the table one by one, eventually settling on a half-assembled Mobian lion that she set to trying to work on using the parts at hand. They were oversized for her in many cases, as were the tools, but that did not dim her efforts in the slightest.

“Rare indeed,” Solaris murmured. “Well played, my old friend.”

She worked while he watched for an unknown period of time, its passage masked as much by her obsessive interest as the inherent difficulty of gauging it while within a Server’s realm. Gradually, however, her thoughts wandered back to their earlier conversation. She mulled over that decidedly less pleasant stretch of her time here, a part of her mind again attempting to make headway in that area while the rest was occupied with the lion.

Eventually, something came to her.

“My friend Rotor Walrus would really love it here, Mister Solaris. I know you don’t like company very much, but he’s a much more skilled hands-on mechanic than I am. The two of you would probably have quite a bit in common, even though he’s a mortal.”

“Hmm…though I never interacted with him, I know of the man, or at least prior versions of him. This is his third Cycle, I think.”

“Well, the current Rotor and I grew up together. We shared a lot of the same interests and were very close, always tinkering and trying to invent things when we weren’t reading comic books or watching sci-fi shows and movies. But our home was in a pretty isolated part of the world, and as we grew older we both started to yearn for opportunity elsewhere, in more advanced societies with cutting-edge technology. Eventually…Rotor got that chance. He did and I didn’t. I was sad, and maybe a little jealous, but it was a once-in-a-lifetime offer, a dream scholarship halfway around the globe, and I convinced him to take it. Several years passed, and we’d write to each other here and there, but over time the correspondence slowly dried up. It was obvious that he was busy but happy, doing what he was meant to be, and I started to accept that I might never see him again.”

She turned to Solaris, eyes damp with memory.

“But when he got word that forces were in motion that endangered his old home, Rotor came back. He left a safe paradise and came back into what eventually became a warzone for us, for me. He saved my life, multiple times, and along with our other friends we eventually managed to avert a disaster that Queen Salasia says would probably have ended this Cycle. But…it cost him. Not that much physically, just some scrapes and burns here and there, but…he had to kill someone for the first time. He did it to save me, and no one blames him for it, but…well, even though I don’t think any of us have been sleeping as well as we did before, Rotor’s been particularly affected by everything that happened back there. Sometimes I wonder if he’ll ever be the same as he was. But if he hadn’t done what he did…if he hadn’t left his safe new home behind to come back…I wouldn’t be here right now. It’s possible that no one on Earth would be.” 

The glass eye narrowed at her, making it obvious that the reason for that particular recounting had not gone unnoticed. Then it disappeared as Solaris bowed his head low, remaining still and silent for so long that the polar bear half-wondered whether he had fallen asleep.

At length, however, the gleam returned, and with it a soft whisper.

“It…sounds like you and your friend went through quite the ordeal together. Would you…would you mind recounting it to me, in full? I am afraid the details are not known to me. I could scry most of them, of course, the events now being in the past, but I think I would prefer to hear them from your perspective.”

She walked up to the edge of the table toward him, surprised, a flicker of hope within her heart.

“Are…are you sure? It’s kind of a sad story…and a pretty long one.”

Solaris smiled.

“That is quite alright, Milly. After all, I have nothing but time.”  

I'd honestly probably be more willing to accept the majority of the dimensions being nonsensical, one-note gimmicks if the show appeared to be leaning into wacky, screwball comedy in the vein of AOSTH. It wouldn't be a particularly interesting approach suited for meaningful characterization, but it could potentially still be fun. Having what seems to be the main alternate universe be more serious clashes with this, however, and I question the wisdom of half-heartedly committing to a dystopian urban setting ruled by Robotnik(s) as the apparent main source of conflict when doing so will only invite comparisons to a certain other Sonic series that took a similar concept and went above and beyond to realize it. 

I recently finished a second playthrough of the game all these years later, having hoped that a combination of patches and mods would improve it. And they did...but only to an extent. Much of the core game is fundamentally poorly designed and beyond saving, often frustratingly so, while playing on a weaker rig than last time meant I had to deal with major framerate issues despite being able to run Dragon Age: Inquisition, a game on the same engine with frequently better visuals, without any problems. Despite that, bugs, though certainly still present, were vastly reduced in quantity and severity, while mods were able to trim off some of the bloat in the crafting system while rebalancing combat and getting rid of SAM's infuriating ambient dialogue. Mods also gave Cora and Liam some much-needed visual overhauls, and I ended up with a greater appreciation of both characters, particularly the former, who jumped up from last in the squad rankings to second or third. Peebee dropped a fair bit in my estimation, but otherwise I enjoy spending time with the Ryder siblings and Tempest crew and would like to see them return in a vastly improved sequel that drops the open-world nonsense. Whether they'll ever see the light of day again is up in the air, particularly with BioWare Montreal long dead and the rest of the developer feeling like it's on life support these days, but the upcoming Mass Effect is rumored to somehow tie into both the trilogy and Andromeda, so I wouldn't completely rule out the possibility...

Overall game ranking bumped up to a 6.5/10 if playing with patches and 7/10 with mods.

Here's to a better future for the series...

 

TheRedStranger has dragged me from my lair and forced me to start pulling my weight around here as a staff member. Given that I know a bit about web development, I'm currently trying to improve and expand on the functionality and aesthetics of the site. If you want to see what I have up at any given moment, change the site's theme (via the dropdown menu at the very bottom) to Site Update Testing.

If you have any suggestions as far as new or altered features, please post them here. I can't promise I'll be able to implement them, but I can at least look into things.

Apparently the full version of this song was only recently uncovered. Enjoy.

Sorzo's Anime Picks:

Legend of the Galactic Heroes

"In every time, in every place, the deeds of men remain the same..."

Original Run:

1988-2001

Length:

Two introductory films (My Conquest is the Sea of Stars and Overture to a New War), a four-season main series of 110 episodes, and a two-season prequel series of 52 episodes.

Dubbed:

No, subtitles only.

Synopsis:

For 150 years, the galaxy has been in a state of perpetual war between its two major powers, the democratic Free Planets Alliance and the autocratic Galactic Empire. As the conflict continues with no end in sight, two men begin rising in power and influence, each with enough cunning and intellect to potentially break the cycle of violence. One is Reinhard von Lohengramm, an ambitious and charismatic Imperial driven by a fierce desire to safeguard his loved ones and purge his homeland of corruption. The other is Yang Wen-li, a laid-back yet brilliant Alliance soldier whose unwavering belief in the democratic ideal causes him to reluctantly fight. As the two win battles and gather allies, facing enemies from within as well as without, they draw ever closer to conflict with one another, a clash between two peerless minds that will shape the course of history.

Why it’s worth watching:

Even were I writing a full review, I'd be hard-pressed to cover the countless things that make Legend of the Galactic Heroes amazing. It is an absolute masterwork and not merely my favorite anime, but likely my favorite television series in general.

To best summarize, I believe its virtues largely fall under the broad categories of presentation and writing.

In terms of presentation, the series is, for want of a better term, classy. Character appearances are detailed and much more realistic than in most anime, especially modern fare, while environments and outfits have wonderful designs that reflect the faction associated with them, whether it be the modern, practical aesthetic of the Free Planets Alliance or the more opulent, refined look of the Empire, which draws from Victorian Europe (particularly Prussia) in its inspiration. This appreciation for Europe's history extends to the soundtrack, which is largely composed of classical compositions from such titans as Wagner and Beethoven. Rather than feeling cliche, these cues are integrated quite well into the material, feeling appropriate to what's onscreen at any given time. Most of the small amount of original music composed for the series (the opening and ending songs, as well as a main theme for each of the two central factions) is superb, with the first three openings and the first ending standing out.

It is the writing of the series, however, that makes it such a treasure. The series has a massive cast of characters that feel well-developed, complex, nuanced, and intelligent, resulting in a core conflict that's far less black-and-white than its Star Wars-style framework suggests. Each of the two sides has heroic and monstrous individuals alike, with most people falling in-between the two extremes. The two protagonists are extremely likable, compelling leads, virtues shared by most of their chief subordinates. I found myself rooting for both groups, making their bloody war with one another far more poignant and tragic than if this was yet another series with clear-cut hero and villain sides. In any other series, the Empire would be the antagonistic group, with perhaps a few sympathetic members that would either defect or perish early on. Here, however, they're simply another group of people, another set of flaws and strengths, just one centered around the ideology of autocracy rather than democracy. Time and again, the merits of these two forms of government are examined and evaluated by characters, inspiring elaborate philosophical and political discussions most series would shy away from in favor of action. This emphasis on contemplation extends to the battles themselves, which focus far more on grand stratagems and cunning tactics than flashy spectacle.

The result is an intellectual, dialogue-driven war drama as comfortable off the battlefield as on it, one that asks a number of challenging questions about ethics and forms of government that the writers take no clear stance on, instead encouraging audience members to draw their own conclusions. When combined with the timeless presentation, the overall result is a series that feels more like a work of classic literature than an anime. 

Drawbacks:

As a series that began in the late 80s, LotGH can look rather dated at times. In addition, its fourth season, though still excellent overall, suffers from uneven pacing and a shockingly poor opening theme. The mini-arcs of the prequel seasons are hit-and-miss, with none being outright bad but few being on par with the main series. Finally, the Earth Cult that serves as an antagonistic element in a number of episodes is woefully one-dimensional and underdeveloped, feeling very out of place in a series that adamantly refuses to paint its other factions with a single moral brush.

Content warnings:

While the show is very much suited for adults only, it is fairly restrained in terms of language and sexuality. Moderate expletives are commonplace, but more severe ones are never used. Several characters are seen in bed together, but there are perhaps 5 seconds of nudity across the entire series. Much more prevalent is the violence, which can be extremely graphic. Though most battles in the series merely show ships exploding, ground engagements and a number of other scenes show large amounts of bloodshed, with a few moments going beyond blood sprays and showing spilled guts and intestines. These latter scenes are quite gruesome, though they are thankfully scarce and the dated animation makes them less intense than they might otherwise be.

Notes: Everything but the core 110 episode series is optional. Either or both of the two films can be watched before starting the series proper, with My Conquest coming first and Overture serving as an extended remake of the first two episodes. The prequel seasons should be watched last. Note that the prequel seasons, which mostly consist of 4-episode short stories, are not in chronological order. A quick Google search will reveal the proper order. That said, I strongly advise against Googling anything about LotGH unless one has finished the main series first. It's very, very easy to run into major spoilers. For the same reason, it's generally regarded as best to avoid the previews at the end of each episode, as they can be surprisingly spoilery themselves.

Two other animated adaptations of the novel series LotGH is based on exist, but neither is part of the main animated canon, with both having different art styles and voice actors. One, Golden Wings, is a film universally hated by the fanbase that should be outright avoided. The other, Die Neue These, is an ongoing new adaptation of the novels that began earlier this year. Its first season covers only around an eighth of the original series, and it's very unlikely that it will see the full story to completion. Best treated as a novelty. with vastly improved environments and space battle visuals at the expense of character designs.

In the spirit of promoting discussion (and convincing a certain admin to try things), I'm going to try to start posting overviews of shows and films that I recommend. These aren't meant to be comprehensive reviews, much less proper analyses, just quick at-a-glance looks that I can whip up within an hour every week or so.

Hear ye, hear ye! By royal decree of her Imperial Majesty, Queen Sally Acorn, it hath been decided to open a public forum for the purpose of discussing works of animation from the distant island nation of Japan. These works, being many in quantity and bizarre in nature, have historically proven to be overwhelmingly popular with the "Nerd" social caste, a group found in both human and Mobian societies characterized by strong aversion to sunlight, fondness of video games, and an extraordinarily low chance of being anything but single. Though seen as a wretched, pathetic lot by the rest of the world, Queen Sally has, in her infinite and magnanimous mercy, taken pity on the local nerd caste, granting them this great boon so that they might be happy despite their loneliness, finding solace in the discussion and idolization of fictitious, idealized members of the opposite sex, the likes of which are said to be common in these foreign animations. These characters, known in nerd parlance as "waifus" ("husbandos" are said to be the alternative adored by female nerds, though such individuals are so infrequently documented that scientists continue to debate whether they truly exist), are the subject of great fascination amongst the nerd population, inspiring levels of devotion that have resulted in great works of art and majestic shrines. However, such fanaticism can breed tribalism if left unchecked, and many terrible, bloody wars have been shed over the embittering question of "Who is best girl?"

In order to mitigate such chaos and prevent outright anarchy from taking root, Queen Sally hath stipulated that the Royal Guard shall ever keep a close watch on the proceedings carried out in this forum. Obey the laws of our land here as elsewhere, lest we have to intervene with great and overwhelming force. To be moderated here is to bring shame to one's waifu, and it is said that there is no greater crime a nerd may commit than this.

With the reminder of our judicious watch established, I, Sorzo, Captain of the Royal Guard, do hereby declare the Free Scribes of Mobius Anime Discussion Thread OPEN! Enter all, and marvel at the majestic works of the Orient! Discuss amongst thine selves favorite characters and series, be they classic or current. Debate the merits of the many genres of anime, be they mecha or magical girl. And most of all, at every opportunity, request the input of @TheRedStranger , for he is unrivaled in his love and passion for the works of Japan. Surely his wisdom will be a boon to this community.

 

 

That episode wasn't horrible or anything, but I thought it was just forgettable fanservice. I'm not that big a fan of TCW either (though I liked it more than Rebels, looking back), especially its take on the Separatists, so a gimmick revolving around incorporating battle droids into Rebels did nothing for me.

Not really, no.

Skimming off of Wikipedia, these are the episodes in Season 2 onward that stood out as being genuinely strong and that I wouldn't mind watching again:

Season 2:

Siege of Lothal Part 1 and 2

The Honorable Ones

Twilight of the Apprentice Part 1 and 2

Season 3:

Trials of the Darksaber (I'm shocked by how much I enjoyed this episode, considering I dislike pretty much every other episode related to Sabine and the Mandalorians)

Through Imperial Eyes

Twin Suns (last scene between Obi-Wan and Maul only; the bulk of the episode with Ezra is awful, and it's a travesty that every second of the episode wasn't devoted to the two)

Zero Hour Part 1 and 2

Season 4:

In the Name of the Rebellion Part 1 and 2

Rebel Assault

Jedi Night

That finale went from predictably bad to unbelievably awful.

As with so many aspects of Disney Star Wars, I honestly find it difficult to FATHOM how some of these ideas were conceived, much less accepted by an individual and put on paper, to say nothing of them being subsequently greenlit by others.

As someone who enjoyed Season 1 a great deal and absolutely loved the interlude special featuring Vader, it's saddened me to see the series quickly fall apart since then. Following Siege of Lothal, there are very, very few episodes I would consider good (though series' best The Honorable Ones is among them), with the remainder an even mix of mediocre and outright bad.

On 10/2/2017 at 6:34 PM, HaloEssence111 said:

10-minute Sonally sketch

Hands down my favorite of your works so far. I know the others you've posted were the products of far more effort and are much more technically impressive, but they're no match for the cuteness.

Sorzo's Ten-Step Guide to Saving the Sonic Comics

 

1. Infiltrate Comic Con posing as a Penders fan and locate his booth by looking for whichever one doesn't have anyone near it.

2. Compliment Penders on his artistic prowess and get him to start bragging. Bludgeon him over the head with an antique waffle iron while he's distracted.

3. Mail Penders to remote Siberia.

4. Use Penders' characters and other "owned" assets with complete impunity. Continue the Archie storyline from where it left off pre-reboot.

5. Use the widespread acclaim of this accomplishment to win influence with Sega and IDW.

6. Use influence to stage a simultaneous two-pronged coup and take control of both companies.

7. Put Sonic games on hiatus for several years. Reboot the entire franchise into a continuation of SatAM.

8. ???

9. Break Nagol out of prison.

10. Profit.

Ah. I've never been into the whole OC thing myself, but, as my profile picture should indicate, I'm quite fond of FiM...or at least its better aspects. I dropped the show during Season 6, as it had become apparent that changes in the writing and production staff had gutted the series, stripping it of its soul and leaving behind a festering husk that was just painful to watch. Consequently, I've distanced myself from all but a few aspects of the fandom. Still, I'm the only person on staff (and possibly on the site) that likes ponies, so feel free to PM me if you ever feel like revisiting that particular topic.

Or you could just flood Wulfsbane's inbox with MLP pics. His ensuing ire would be most amusing, and I'm reasonably certain I could abuse my moderator status to keep you from being IP banned for the next 50 years.

Greetings! I hope you'll enjoy the community here. Granted, it's plagued by horrifying degrees of madness, malcontent, and misconduct, but it shouldn't be a problem. I don't post that often, after all.

In all seriousness, it's nice to see high-quality art that's still done entirely by hand. It isn't all that common these days.

Out of curiosity, does the Halo part of your username refer to angel adornment, enormous parasite-ridden doomsday ringworlds, or something else entirely?

Alright, so I've been behind on updates...by the better part of a year. Again. I have quite a bit of the next section done, and while I haven't touched the story since November, I'm hoping to get started on the rest soon.

In the meantime, I've created cover art for the story. Enjoy!

 

Please note that this review contains minor spoilers.

 

Prior to its release, I was eagerly anticipating Mass Effect: Andromeda. BioWare has been my favorite developer for years, and, despite a rocky start, the original Mass Effect trilogy is a phenomenal achievement overall, one that provided both my favorite game of the last console generation and some of the most engaging moments I’ve experienced in gaming overall. Unfortunately, Andromeda proved to be a colossal disappointment, one that failed to be a satisfying work in its own right, much less live up to the high standards of its predecessors.

As is the norm for BioWare games, Mass Effect is a series most known for its narrative elements, from sweeping interstellar plotlines to complex characters that often come to feel like friends to agonizing moral dilemmas with no clear right answer. On this front, Andromeda begins promisingly enough. Set some six hundred years after the original trilogy, the game depicts the efforts of the Andromeda Initiative, a group of a hundred thousand pioneers hailing from several Milky Way species, to colonize the titular foreign galaxy. Departing in cryogenic stasis during the events of Mass Effect 2, these brave individuals awake on the edge of a new frontier, one far removed in both space and time from the people and events surrounding Commander Shepard. Rather than once again assuming the role of the legendary Spectre, players step into the shoes of Ryder, an unproven young man or woman who is quickly thrust into the role of Pathfinder, a senior explorer tasked with leading the charge of discovering new worlds to settle. The story thus presents itself as a tale of exploration and discovery, focused on wonder and possibility rather than simply depicting yet another galactic war in a genre saturated with them.

Unfortunately, this promise quickly proves to be little more than an illusion, as the game both handles exploration and discovery very poorly and spends most of its main plotline depicting…well, yet another galactic war, one that fails to muster even a fraction of the drama and emotional weight that Mass Effect 3’s apocalyptic conflict so masterfully commanded. As a setting, the Helius Cluster, the area of the Andromeda galaxy in which the game takes place, feels woefully barren and underdeveloped. Where the first Mass Effect depicted no fewer than eleven alien races living in the Milky Way, with more added throughout the rest of the trilogy, Helius features a paltry two, the Kett and Angara, only one of which is even native to the Cluster. Of the two species, the Kett exist solely for the sake of the game having villains; they’re a group of universally evil cardboard cutouts with not a single interesting character among them, their only noteworthy trait a knockoff of a major element from prior games in the series. The Angara, to their credit, are far more complex and fleshed out, ranking among the most developed species in the franchise. Yet their lore often still proves surprisingly uninteresting, in part because it is so enmeshed with their one-dimensional counterparts, and it certainly doesn’t offset the fact that most of the series’ established species aren’t in Andromeda, making the game offer the least variety of aliens out of any entry in the franchise. Frustratingly, the game hints at including species such as Quarians and Hanar in an upcoming DLC or sequel, giving the impression that BioWare stripped out certain staples of the franchise in order to sell them back later, knowing their popularity would drive demand. To the game’s credit, however, Andromeda is the first entry in the series to offer a believable gender balance for all of its alien species. Salarian, Krogan, and Turian women were completely absent in the first two games and still very rare in Mass Effect 3, yet in Andromeda they are fairly commonplace, one of the few improvements the game has to offer over its predecessors.

In addition to the Kett and Angara, Helius features the Remnant, a group of machine guardians left behind by a mysterious lost civilization. Unfortunately, they are not a race in the way that the Geth of past games were. They feature no meaningful backstory, culture, or individual characters, and are just mindless drones that exist to pad out the enemy roster. In fact, they come across as nothing more than blatant ripoffs of Sentinels from the Halo series in both purpose and, in the case of one enemy type, even design. The mystery of the Remnant’s creators is meant to be one of the major forces driving the plot, but very little is ever revealed about them, and they ultimately come across as just another generic lost civilization that has been done to death in science-fiction, from the Forerunners of Halo to Mass Effect’s own Protheans. There is a single plot twist involving them that is revealed late in the game with fascinating thematic potential, but while this concept is given some degree of exploration, it ultimately feels superficial and awkwardly tacked onto the storyline. Otherwise, the Remnant’s creators serve no real purpose beyond leaving behind conveniently functional devices that conveniently serve as Deus Ex Machinas that instantly fix most of the Andromeda Initiative’s problems and can conveniently only be activated by the player character.

Rounding out the enemy factions are the Outlaws, a group of dissidents who were exiled from the Andromeda Initiative prior to the start of the game as a result of conflict over resource shortages. Such struggles are a believable concept, but the end results actually seen in the game are anything but. We’re supposed to believe that, within a single year, thousands of eager colonists, all of whom had undergone psychological screening and were acutely aware of the risks in leaving the Milky Way, became pirates and raiders, creating wretched hives of scum and villainy that would make the residents of Mos Eisley blush. Andromeda devotes a significant portion of its length to such individuals, both in and out of combat, and by the end of the game I was convinced that the Initiative must have had one of the most inept vetting processes in all of fiction. The game attempts to defend this with a few brief references to possible mental degradation as a result of cryogenic stasis, but it felt like a flimsy excuse whipped up at the last moment.  What could have been an intriguing study of the limits of human morality and civility in times of scarcity and psychological pressure instead feels cartoonishly exaggerated in order to make certain locations evoke the Wild West and to, once again, pad out the enemy count.

Andromeda boasts an impressive amount of content; my playthrough clocked in at around 100 hours, far more than my longest run of any game in the trilogy, even with DLC. Unfortunately, very little of that content actually feels meaningful or memorable. The main plotline takes place over only a handful of missions, and while these individual missions are generally enjoyable and designed well, the larger story they tell is very lacking. Themes of discovery and exploration quickly give way to a dull struggle against a paper-thin villain and a race to see who can claim the secrets of ancient plot devices first. This culminates in a last mission that stands out as one of the worst finales I’ve ever seen in a game, a massive sequence of things happening without rhyme or reason. I had a difficult time following what was going on, one exacerbated by the decision of the developers to rapidly reintroduce over a dozen NPCs of varying significance from earlier in the game all at once via the radio during gameplay, resulting in my being bombarded with voices that were largely hard to place due to most members of any given alien race using the same voice filter. The joining of these characters in the finale was meant to be payoff for various subplots and player decisions throughout the game, but their inclusion was handled so haphazardly that it proved detrimental rather than rewarding. Player mileage here will vary, of course, and subtitles will likely alleviate this issue. The game’s final battle doesn’t even offer an actual boss fight, just waves of the same enemies that I’d fought over and over again for dozens of hours. As I waded through the hordes in order to press buttons as directed by waypoint markers, I was treated to the ramblings of the antagonist, who continued to spout some of the most generic villain tripe imaginable. Rather than coming across as remotely interesting or even intimidating, he gave the impression of someone out of a middle school student’s edgy fanfiction. This comparison occurred to me while I was playing the final battle, and it speaks volumes as to how much the narrative had failed to engage me by its conclusion.

Hypothetically, I suppose it would be possible for a game to have such a weak main plot but still deliver a strong narrative overall. After all, Mass Effect 2 featured a very brief main plot that few will argue was of standout quality, save for a fantastic final mission that’s orders of magnitude better than the disaster described above. But Mass Effect 2 made up for the shortcomings of its central story by devoting most of its content to side missions, which expertly fleshed out both its characters and the setting they lived in. Andromeda features an enormous amount of side content, but the overwhelming majority of it is forgettable fluff with no real substance, an abundance of fetch quests and the like that, despite being given flimsy narrative pretenses, feel like they exist solely for the sake of giving the player things to do. The developers insisted on adopting a pseudo-open world approach, with most of the game taking place on four large planets and the Nexus, Andromeda’s substitute for the Citadel. While the sales and accolades of open world games such as The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt were no doubt alluring to the developers at BioWare, Andromeda proves that the Mass Effect team has no better clue how to populate large spaces with meaningful content than their peers who created Dragon Age: Inquisition do. If anything, they’re worse at it. The spaces are much larger, and consequently more empty, thanks to the awful, awful inclusion of the Nomad, a rover similar to the Mako from the first game. While I wasn’t a fan of most of the open world Mako segments in the original Mass Effect, I never felt that their issues were with the vehicle itself; it controlled much better than people gave it credit for, and it handled fairly well in combat. Rather, the open world Mako segments failed because they were open world, with environments largely devoid of interesting content yet filled to the brim with infuriating mountains and debris that often made traversing them a miserable experience. With the Nomad, BioWare has kept the vexing topography and lack of interesting content while throwing in worse controls and a complete lack of armament. The Nomad generally can’t even kill enemies by running them over, so encounters while driving boil down to either driving past foes or awkwardly getting out to fight them on foot.

Another advantage Dragon Age: Inquisition’s open environments have over Andromeda’s is their art direction. Gameplay while wandering across the newest incarnation of Thedas was often less than exciting, but the world was always at least breathtakingly beautiful, from its snowy forests and ruins to its storm-battered marshes. Andromeda features comparable graphical fidelity, but its main worlds are distressingly uninspired. Of the main four open world areas, there’s a generic ice planet, two flavors of desert, and some badlands. Outside of their skyboxes and the occasional alien structure or ship, these worlds all look like they could be parts of Earth. The whole premise of the game is to explore a new galaxy, yet Andromeda sends players to places that are as mundane and uncreative as they come. There’s nothing alien or fantastical about the spitting image of remote Arizona. Underground Remnant structures are more aesthetically engaging at first, but they all look extremely similar and quickly become every bit as monotonous, a sense made worse by the fact that dialogue and gameplay mechanics tend to be recycled between them. These open environments are thus uninteresting to explore visually, and gameplay itself involves no real sense of exploration, with map markers pointing out almost everything of note in even completely untouched areas and quest design mostly boiling down to following waypoint markers. Across dozens of hours of playtime, I encountered only two or three locations of note that weren’t marked on the map; these instances were thrilling, offering a genuine sense of discovery, but they were akin to drops of water in the midst of a vast desert.

Thankfully, the game’s smaller areas tend to be much better designed in almost every respect. These include a jungle world filled with bioluminescent mushrooms, an asteroid featuring low gravity physics that actually made the Nomad somewhat enjoyable to mess around in, and various linear zones used for giving each of the game’s six squad members a loyalty mission. These loyalty missions aren’t as memorable as most of their counterparts in Mass Effect 2, but they’re still some of the best content Andromeda has to offer, a reminder that BioWare’s strengths lie not in open worlds, but small, fairly linear spaces packed with detail that allow for developers to convey specific narrative experiences. The developers of the original Mass Effect trilogy wisely shifted almost exclusively to this type of gameplay area for the second and third games, and I sincerely hope that BioWare Montreal will follow suit with any sequels Andromeda might have.

A well-designed loyalty mission is still only as good as the character it stars, and Andromeda’s party is thankfully fairly solid. At only six members, it is tied with the original game as one of the smallest in a BioWare title, and while it’s a far cry from the best ensemble in the series, it at least surpasses the party characterization of the first game. Team members interact with one another frequently, both in the Nomad and aboard the Tempest, Andromeda’s equivalent of the Normandy, and no one is burdened by huge amounts of exposition about his or her species. In fact, the two human characters are the weakest links here. Cora feels like a much weaker replacement for Ashley, displaying her outward abrasiveness yet offering very little of her private thoughtfulness and heart. With a grating voice, tendency to awkwardly obsess over a handful of topics, and character model plagued by both a bad haircut and bizarre semi-permanent smirk, she’s one of my least favorite party members in the series. Liam, a generally easy-going fellow with a fondness for humor, is certainly more likable, but I had a very difficult time understand his voice actor more often than not, and his various scenes never effectively gelled into what felt like a coherent character. The aliens fare better, thankfully. As what’s essentially Grumpy Old Krogan: The Character, Drack isn’t the most intriguing or complex squad member out there, but he’s fun to have around and has a surprisingly heartwarming bond with one of the game’s very few memorable NPCs who don’t reside on the Tempest. I found PeeBee, an energetic yet reclusive Asari scientist, to be more likable than the original trilogy’s Liara, while Vetra, despite initially feeling very poorly shoe-horned into the party, made for a compelling combination of roguish scoundrel and protective mother figure.

 Surprisingly, the best character in the game by far proved to be the game’s Angaran party member, Jaal. Rather than feeling like an expository mouthpiece for his people, Jaal serves as a fish out of water among the crew, someone struggling to learn the ways of others as much as he is attempting to educate them in his own culture’s ways. Conversations with him explore a wide range of topics, from spirituality to family to personal hopes and dreams, and he feels far more tied into the main plot than anyone else. When the plot twist behind the Kett was revealed midway through the game, I found it hard to care about it for its own sake; it was little more than a knockoff of a concept found throughout earlier Mass Effect games and many other works of science-fiction. Yet the revelation deeply affected Jaal, and I wound up caring about it for a short time because I cared about him. Similarly, a plot twist near the end of the game, though conceptually intriguing, has little narrative weight except for how it affects Jaal. His relationship with Ryder feels refreshingly genuine, beginning with an uneasy alliance out of necessity and gradually developing into friendship and ultimately a sense of brotherhood. After only a single game, I personally rank Jaal higher than all but a few of the original trilogy’s squad members, each of whom had two or even three games to solidify a place in my heart. If he features prominently in future installments, Jaal could easily become the next Garrus Vakarian, something I don’t say lightly. As it is, he’s without question the brightest spot in a largely lackluster experience.

The four additional crew members aboard the Tempest are more of a mixed bag. I was tepid at best toward Gil, the engineer, and Lexi, the doctor. Despite having several conversations, they rarely had anything interesting to say, with Gil in particular droning on about the same few topics ad nauseum. Kallo, the helmsman, was more likable; he’s certainly no Joker, but I enjoyed our mutual dislike of Gil and his neurotic loyalty to his ship. I found the best of the four to be Suvi, a science officer who also believes in Intelligent Design and is fiercely defensive about the matter in response to ridicule from a largely secular field. As a Christian, I found this juxtaposition to be very engaging and was disappointed that it was only explored in one or two brief conversations.

As for the protagonist, I found Ryder to be serviceable but unremarkable overall. While only one Commander Shepard existed, with the player determining gender, male and female Ryder coexist as siblings who opted to accompany their father to Andromeda; whichever sibling the player does not select exists as an NPC. I chose the brother, Scott, and for the most part he came across as a competent but generic action hero, an impression likely caused in part by how similar his voice actor sounds to the ubiquitous Nolan North. There were no options available for selecting Scott’s background, and the dialogue wheel simultaneously felt more nuanced and more limited than in past games. The Paragon/Renegade system has been entirely removed, and normal conversation responses allow players to choose between answers categorized by labeled tones: Emotional or Logical, Casual or Professional, or any one of the four. In practice, this generally felt like three variations of Paragon and a watered down, less amusing version of the Sarcastic option in Dragon Age II. While I appreciated this change somewhat as a player who generally prefers upstanding, Paragon-style characters, fans of any other approach, particularly Renegade players, will find their options sorely limited.

Moral choices, one of the series’ defining staples, are relatively commonplace in Andromeda, but almost none of them are memorable or carry any sense of dramatic weight or moral complexity. If anything, they largely feel tacked on, additions made for checking off another item on the developer’s list of what makes a Mass Effect game. For example, a main story mission late in the game has you fighting alongside an allied character. Near the end of the mission, the game suddenly threw in a group of prisoners with little introduction who had nothing to do with the story and forced me to choose between them and my ally. My party members commented on these prisoners as if I should know them, but I’d never seen them mentioned anywhere except on part of the game’s website related to the multiplayer. The scene tried to present itself as a Virmire-style choice, but it rang hollow, largely devoid of buildup and emotional stakes. Ultimately, across the entire game, only one decision stands out as having a strong combination of buildup, moral ambiguity, and sense of importance.

Prior to the release of Andromeda, I was excited by the announcement that Ryder’s family members would play a part of the story. BioWare did a commendable job of using familial bonds to make Hawke a more compelling, relatable protagonist in Dragon Age II, and I hoped to see the concept expanded in a game with much more development time. Unfortunately, its inclusion in Andromeda is so half-baked that it feels nonexistent more often than not. Ryder’s sibling and father were absent from the overwhelming majority of the game, and what little screentime they had was not enough to leave much of an impression or make me care about them. In fact, their most memorable scenes aren’t even interactions with the player, but recorded moments from the past that are unlocked over the course of the game. These scenes are among the stronger narrative moments of the game, but they are unfortunately few in number and tied to an absolutely baffling unlocking system: they can only be obtained by picking up glowing orbs scattered throughout the open worlds, many of which are placed on top of mountains and other areas that are frustrating yet still unchallenging to reach. This system does not line up at all with the thin narrative justification for it, and clearly only exists to give the player pointless busywork.

Wasting the player’s time is, incidentally, something that Andromeda excels at. Many sidequests feel padded out for its own sake, often requiring the player to repeat the same task multiple times or travel across large stretches of the map or even to other planets for no real reason. The most egregious example of this was a minor quest stretched so thin that I was left enraged and speechless. It began innocuously enough on the Nexus, with a conversation that revealed one of the colonists, a kindly old woman, was carrying a fatal disease on the verge of progressing into a contagious state. The premise intrigued me, as it offered an obvious choice-based moral dilemma that felt realistic. In pursuit of my goal, I was tasked with traveling to another part of the Nexus. And then another. And then another. And then another. And then another. After this, I had to board the Tempest and perform a scan of a star system. And then another. And then another. And then another. And then another. Finally, I had to land on an open world, travel to one of its most remote locations, and scan an object. In all this time, the plot had not progressed meaningfully; I was just looking for the individual in question. At this point, however, the quest jumped the shark, throwing in a sinister conspiracy involving using the woman for biological warfare that had apparently formed and progressed heavily within the past few minutes. After this, I had to follow a scanned trail down to a structure, where I killed a group of generic enemies and finally reached my goal. I was then treated to a 30 second conversation and a moral ‘dilemma’ that had spiraled out of recognition of what the quest was originally about for the sake of drama, and by that point I’d stopped caring. In one of the worst examples of quest design I have ever seen, someone took a compelling 5 minute quest and added 15 or so minutes of pure filler, in doing so breaking the internal logic of the narrative and cheapening what could have been one of the game’s most poignant moments.

Scanning is one of the more common methods used to pad the game’s running time. As in past games, planets and certain anomalies can be scanned in space from aboard the player’s ship. While this is sometimes tied to quests, as in the above debacle, the process is generally optional, incentivized by new knowledge of the setting and occasional rewards of minerals, experience, and the like. Unfortunately, the tangible rewards are in very small quantities, while this knowledge is almost uniformly very dry and uninteresting. Planet descriptions in the series have always been a mixed bag, but in the past terrestrial worlds have generally had at least something noteworthy about them, with a few cases even proving fascinating. The first Mass Effect had an entry about the mysterious Leviathan of Dis, which foreshadowed the Reapers and was relevant to multiple questlines in the third game. Mass Effect 3’s galaxy map featured an abundance of colonies, and it was rewarding to read about how each was faring in the war. The worlds of Andromeda, on the other hand, apparently have nothing interesting about them beyond atmospheric compositions and similarly riveting details. At one point near the end of the game, seven systems opened up on the galaxy map. I scanned them all for the sake of completion, but not one of them offered a quest or even an entertaining bit of insight into the setting. Thankfully, exploring the galaxy map still has some merit, courtesy of the absolutely breathtaking visuals it offers. These fully rotatable first-person panoramas of space are simply gorgeous and filled with detail, such as planets having light and dark sides relative to their star and light warping when one looks at a black hole. Though it eventually starts to lose its luster as one explores one system after another, there’s a genuine sense of beauty here that the open worlds sorely lack.

Far more pervasive and problematic than orbital scanning is its equivalent while on foot. Ryder’s equipment includes a wrist-mounted scanner, and Andromeda forces players to use it constantly. Whether as a means of acquiring certain resources, solving various “puzzles” that require no thought beyond the mental prowess needed to follow a line, or advancing quest objectives, scanning plays a role in almost every aspect of the game’s single-player. And in virtually every case, it’s dull and unrewarding. The process of scanning environmental objects was more or less perfected in Metroid Prime, the very game that popularized the concept to begin with, fifteen years ago. In Prime, scanning was almost entirely optional, required only to operate the occasional piece of machinery; otherwise, it served to flesh out the game’s narrative and offer insight into dealing with enemies and certain puzzles. The process of scanning felt fluid, and items were highlighted in different colors based on their significance, letting players focus on those that contained clues and meaty bits of lore while ignoring those with more mundane text. Andromeda successfully emulates none of these traits. Scanning is required at every turn, feels decidedly clunky in combat, and offers up reams and reams of nothing but dry technobabble that I almost never found interesting. Overall, its existence serves as nothing more than an annoyance.

Scanning on foot wouldn’t be possible without SAM, an artificial intelligence implanted in Ryder’s head for most of the game, ala Cortana from the Halo series. Like Cortana, he is a constant companion that plays a key role in advancing the plot at many turns.

Unlike Cortana, who was a great character and in many ways the heart and soul of the stories she featured in, SAM is an abomination that ranks as one of my most disliked characters in all of gaming.

To his credit, SAM is not completely without redeeming qualities. In the handful of private discussions he has with Ryder, the two tend to discuss the natures of artificial and organic life; these conversations are reasonably interesting, though they’re fairly boilerplate material for the series and nowhere near as compelling as Shepard’s talks with EDI and Legion in past games. Everywhere else, however, SAM is a cancer plaguing Andromeda’s already troubled structure. For starters, he is a broken plot device capable of solving anything and everything, in both gameplay and cutscenes. Quest design in Andromeda virtually always boils down to doing what SAM says, robbing the player of any sense of agency in a game purportedly about exploration. I didn’t feel like I was discovering things; I was just there to transport SAM around from one location to the next while he figured everything out. Narratively, he serves as a one-size-fits-all solution for any situation. Need to interface with ancient alien technology? SAM can do it. Captured by the enemy? Don’t worry, SAM’s there to save the day. The game frequently likens the relationship between SAM and Ryder to a form of symbiosis; the two are purportedly equals who complement one another. In practice, I found Ryder to feel like a meat puppet for SAM whose only contributions were shooting enemies that generally only happened to be there because this is a video game, and it quickly became clear that he was the real hero of the story, the reason why the role of Pathfinder was so important.

This in itself would be problematic but not completely damning if it was handled more deftly. After all, Cortana served a similar purpose in Halo, essentially functioning as the brain of a largely silent shell of a player character. But the developers at Bungie understood this dynamic far better than their BioWare counterparts. The Master Chief was deliberately a minimalist character, one that complemented the far livelier Cortana and encouraged players to see her as the more important of the two, the one more worthy of emotional investment. Yet the Chief was still allowed to shine over her from time to time, keeping Cortana from feeling like a perfect plot device and making the Chief more than a walking gun with the occasional one-liner. These moments helped sell the idea of the two as a genuine team, as equals, and Andromeda is sorely lacking in them.

Worsening the matter considerably is that SAM has no character to speak of. His personality consists of being “helpful” and “vaguely curious” and nothing else. He’s an incredibly bland character that delivers almost nothing but dull, expository dialogue in the same emotionless monotone for dozens of hours on end. It grows stale very, very quickly, yet there’s no escaping it. SAM is everywhere in Andromeda, whether you like it or not. With other team members in BioWare games, you can at least mostly leave them out of your party if you dislike them, barring the occasional loyalty mission and the like; in some cases, you can even avoid recruiting them or kick them out. But SAM is as integral a part of Andromeda as Ryder, with what feels like as much dialogue and none of the player input.

Even worse is the nature of SAM’s dialogue triggers. For whatever reason, the developers at BioWare decided to have SAM repeat the same line every time certain actions occur in open world environments. Want to mine for minerals in the Nomad? SAM has a single line that he’ll say every time you try to do so, something that got so annoying that I soon gave up on the already tedious process. Yet that’s nothing, nothing, compared to his insistence on commenting on temperatures. On each world, various environmental hazards exist; when exposed to them, a bar on Ryder’s suit begins to drain, followed by the player’s shields and health upon its depletion. SAM comments every time a hazard is entered or left, something already unnecessary thanks to ample visual warning in the user interface and auditory warning via sound effects. Still, these comments would be bearable if hazards were limited to pools of acid and the like, things completely avoidable. Tragically, half of the game’s open worlds feature environments mostly comprised of hazards in the form of extreme heat and cold, with players having to frequently traverse between them and safe zones. And SAM comments on these transitions. EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. Heaven help you if you’re in a prolonged combat engagement that forces you to keep darting in and out of safe areas for the sake of tactical positioning, as you’ll be treated to a ceaseless chorus of SAM’s monotone drivel that does its best to grind your sanity into dust.  Even on the Tempest, the player isn’t safe, as SAM frequently feels the need to tell Ryder that he has unread email, regardless of whether or not said messages even exist. Ocarina of Time’s Navi has long been mocked as one of the most annoying characters in gaming, a helper who never shuts up. SAM is this concept embodied, the annoyance of Navi cranked up by several orders of magnitude.  By the end of the game, I found SAM a greater argument in favor of the “Red” ending to Mass Effect 3 than the Reapers ever were.

While Andromeda literally distances itself from earlier games in the series in terms of narrative, its combat clearly uses Mass Effect 3 as its foundation, sometimes too much so. Skill trees are identical in structure, while the weight system returns in a slightly tweaked fashion. Many of Andromeda’s weapons hail from the last game, as do most of its powers. Even many of the enemies are clearly derived from past foes; Atlases, Nemeses, Cerberus Troopers, Geth Hunters, Ravagers, Brutes, and Banshees from Mass Effect 3 all have clear spiritual successors, as do Varren and Krogan enemies from Mass Effect 2. There are a few new opponent types, of course, but they fail to leave much of an impression; the only exception is an optional world boss, which has decent mechanics and makes for a thrilling encounter, but even it becomes repetitive, repeating the same pattern three times, and is recycled for each of the open worlds in lieu of them receiving unique bosses, a move that, once again, makes a game built on the promise of discovery feel frustratingly predictable and formulaic.

While combat encounters are handled fairly well in small, carefully designed spaces, such as loyalty mission areas or multiplayer maps, encounter design suffers greatly in the open world areas. Enemy groups are littered at random, feeling almost procedurally generated, and are not nearly as fun to fight as their handplaced counterparts. Worse are the various creatures that populate these worlds, mindless bullet sponges that respawn frequently, often out of thin air, and contribute nothing but a sense of tedium to the game.

Though the foes you’ll be facing and what you’ll be attacking them with offer little in the way of innovation for the series, Andromeda is nonetheless distinct from Mass Effect 3 in terms of combat in several key ways, though only some are for the better. By far the best thing that it brings to the table is the jetpack used by player characters; fast and fluid, it greatly boosts mobility and opens up a level of verticality to encounters, increasing the ways one might approach battles in large environments while upping the intensity of smaller ones. A more mundane but still very welcome addition is the ability to blindfire, which has long been a staple of the TPS genre and was conspicuously absent in past games. Unfortunately, heavy melee attacks have been removed for some baffling reason, while regular melee attacks are now clunky and unsatisfying to use, despite their solid damage. Cover grabs were also taken out, an exclusion made all the more frustrating by how well the jetpack’s mobility would have complemented them. The process of taking cover is now automated, a decision I’m ambivalent toward; it’s convenient and usually works, but the times when it doesn’t are frustrating, and being “snapped in” to a piece of cover gave the player a greater sense of control. Finally, power cooldowns are now separate, ala the first Mass Effect, rather than universal. While this ostensibly adds complexity and encourages strategy, in practice it just makes powers feel far less useful than they should, as they can be used far less often overall and aren’t as flexible. The weaknesses of such a system are most pronounced when trying to build a character that relies primarily on power damage. In Mass Effect 3’s multiplayer, one of my favorite characters was the Human Adept; with the right build, I could demolish hordes of enemies using just biotics on Gold difficulty, barely needing to use my gun. When playing that character’s equivalent in Andromeda, even on Bronze I had to rely on my gun the vast majority of the time, with my powers feeling like little more than novelties.

Andromeda has considerably overhauled the series’ class system in the sense that traditional classes no longer exist. Ryder can choose from most of the game’s abilities out of the gate, with the player free to focus on combat, biotic, or tech abilities or mix them as he or she sees fit. The traditional class labels of Soldier, Adept, Vanguard, etc. now apply to profiles that are unlocked based on the allocation of skill points; they award stat bonuses and can be switched at any given time, even in the middle of combat. While this system perhaps limits replay value, it’s a solid alteration, encouraging experimentation and preventing players from getting stuck with a class they find they don’t like. Unfortunately, the potential of this system is handicapped considerably by the fact that players can only have three abilities at any given time; the power wheel has been completely removed. It’s a very frustrating design decision that ultimately made the game feel needlessly monotonous. While players can choose between four sets of three, the fact that switching is buried underneath two menus and resets all of your cooldowns keeps the process from feeling enticing.

The exclusion of the power wheel also means that the player cannot order squad members to use their abilities, leaving their effectiveness to the game’s lackluster AI. In addition, party members do not have customizable armor, even in the form of alternate outfits, or weapons, and have a meager three abilities each. The result is an unprecedented lack of party control and customization for a BioWare game, one that results in squad members feeling almost completely pointless and forgettable in combat.

The lack of armor and weapon customization options for party members is made all the more baffling by the substantial options available to Ryder. Andromeda features a solid crafting system that allows player-created weapons and armor pieces to be fitted with augments that add stats or special properties, from bonus power damage and extra mod slots to regenerating ammo and shield boosts upon killing foes. While this level of customization is one of the game’s best features, its implementation has several major shortcomings. Any given augment can only be crafted once; while the augment is returned if the crafted item is disassembled, additional copies can only be found as part of random loot, meaning players are left to the mercy of a random number generator more often than not. In addition, augments are so useful that only crafted weapons and items feel worthwhile, making those found as loot or in stores seem worthless outside of the handful of materials they provide when disassembled. This, combined with the relative scarcity of research data required to unlock crafting blueprints, discourages players from trying out different weapons and armor pieces. Players are instead incentivized to merely pick a handful of item types and spend their resources on upgrading them throughout the game. Finally, the descriptions of augments that modify weapon projectiles are needlessly vague, providing no indication of how they affect statistics.

Multiplayer in Andromeda is almost identical to that of Mass Effect 3, at least on paper. Groups of up to four players cooperatively fight waves of enemies based on one of the game’s three opposing factions, with timed objectives occurring every few waves. Completion of matches rewards credits that can be used to purchase boxes containing random characters, weapons, and gear. It’s fairly enjoyable thanks to inheriting such a strong foundation, but after spending nearly two hundred hours in Mass Effect 3’s co-op, I was hoping for something more fresh. As it stands, it’s hard not to see the suite as a watered down version of the last game’s; the selection of characters, gear, and weapons is far smaller than that of Mass Effect 3’s final roster, while the enemy types are largely derivative yet not quite as fun to fight, failing to “click” in the way that their predecessors did. Frustratingly, the process of levelling in multiplayer, one of the few issues I had with the last game, has become much, much more tedious in Andromeda. Characters take far longer to reach the level cap, and leveling a character levels only that character, rather than an entire class. Finally, many of a character’s possible skill points can only be obtained by acquiring additional unlocks of that character, a decision that absolutely cripples the potential of rarer characters. Unlocking an ultra-rare character is hard enough; I shouldn’t have to get that same character nine more times in order to have a proper allotment of skill points. It’s ridiculous. Variety was the lifeblood of Mass Effect 3’s multiplayer, with the sheer diversity of possible playstyles making up for content that was otherwise extremely repetitive. In Andromeda, the amount of effort required to achieve even a moderate level of variety is absurd. Still, despite these issues, the multiplayer here has potential, provided BioWare reduces the grind and delivers the quality of free DLC that made Mass Effect 3’s multiplayer go from very good to amazing.

In the meantime, patches are desperately needed to improve the game’s balance, which is incredibly poor in both single-player and multiplayer. As of this writing, almost everything besides certain sniper rifles and melee feels pitifully weak. In my own experience, fully upgraded biotic explosions fail to kill basic enemies on Bronze, while using even a level 10 Avenger on a basic Silver enemy is roughly the equivalent of shooting spitwads at it. I’ve seen similar complaints echoed on numerous forums, and in-game it’s obvious that most players gravitate toward the Vanquisher, one of the only weapons that actually feels worth a darn. I myself was fortunate enough to unlock this weapon and thus have been able to perform well in matches, but the imbalance is still obvious, and relying on a single weapon gets old quickly. Again, variety is key to making this style of multiplayer work.

Balance is far from the only aspect of the game that requires patching. Andromeda is an absolute trainwreck in terms of polish, a mess that feels like it launched at least six months too early and has enough bugs to make the 2006 incarnation of Sonic the Hedgehog blush. The game’s facial animations are already the stuff of infamy and memes, and most of the character models, especially for humans and Asari, are little better. Documenting all of the bugs that I experienced during my single playthrough and time with multiplayer would be an almost impossible undertaking, given both their quantity and my failure to write them down as they occurred. From what I can recall, however, these include:

-Multiple freezes and crashes, one of which required me to do a hard restart of my computer.

-Music failing to load, both in-game and in the main menu.

-Ryder’s head and neck deforming horribly during certain conversations.

-Ryder’s voice having a helmet filter, even while he was in normal clothes on the Tempest and Nexus.

-A major companion quest becoming impossible to advance without a reload, due to a script error.

-Load times massively increasing at random after the 1.05 patch.

-Multiple copies of the same character appearing at once, often on top of one another.

-Enemies randomly turning invisible (as in completely vanishing, not just being affected by a cloaking field).

-Enemies and party members spawning in midair, where they remained for several seconds.

-Many areas, even in small environments such as the Tempest, briefly appearing as pitch black before they loaded in.

-Party members being completely “killed” by an enemy’s sync-kill, with no possibility to revive them without reloading.  

-Reviving a party member defeated by a sync-kill resulted in a clone of that character appearing, while the body remained on the ground.

-A quest would not properly update in my journal, thus becoming forever stuck there.

-A quest-based conversation triggering every time I went to a certain fast travel location, even long after that quest was finished.

-Enormous lag in certain multiplayer matches.

-Certain multiplayer matches not offering experience or credit rewards upon completion.

-Receiving emails that referenced events that had not yet occurred.

-Numerous cases of dialogue not reflecting events that had already happened.

-Party banter starting midway through after fast travelling.

-Uneven volume levels in certain conversations; some characters were much louder than normal, and vice versa.

-Dialogue during gameplay is frequently cut off if the player keeps moving, often as a result of another character speaking over it.

-At one point, I was killed by a nearby enemy during a conversation. This had nothing to do with the story, mind you. I was just talking with someone, and a monster spawned nearby, wandered close enough to see me, and gradually mauled me to death while I was talking.

-Certain parts of the Strike Team menu became glitched and would not respond.

Andromeda had nearly five years of development time, and it’s shocking that the end result is so flawed, riddled through and through with both technical issues and core design problems that no patch can fix. Though it offers brief glimpses of greatness, most notably Jaal and the jetpack, the overall product is disappointing on almost every level, a shockingly mediocre follow-up to some of the best games ever made. I cannot stress enough how much I wanted to love Andromeda. It was my first day one game purchase since Mass Effect 3, and even as the negative reviews and scathing Early Access reactions began to fill the Internet, I went into the game excited and determined to have a great time. Yet as the hours rolled on, my enthusiasm withered away into nothingness, and it eventually got to the point that I didn’t even want to keep playing, doing so only out of obligation. Loathe as I was to do so, I was forced to admit to myself that Andromeda was in no way what I’d been waiting so long for. It’s not even a good game in its own right, especially in its current state.

Perhaps the worst thing about the game is how soulless it feels, how uninspired and lifeless it is outside of a tiny handful of characters. In many ways it goes through the motions of being a Mass Effect game, but it lacks the heart of one, the sense of driving passion and ambition, the artfulness and care. These qualities are intangible, yes, but they are crucial nonetheless, and if they cannot be recaptured, the future of the series looks bleak indeed.

At least we’ll always have the original trilogy.

Overall Rating: 6/10

 

Final Recommendation: For all its content, I don’t feel this game is worth full price. For diehard fans of the series and those interested in the multiplayer, it might be worth checking out at around $15 or less, though even then I strongly recommend waiting several months for patches and balance changes. Otherwise, I suggest avoiding this title altogether, unless a direct sequel to it somehow proves to be amazing. Even ignoring the game’s price, what few bits of excellence Andromeda has to offer simply aren’t worth the dozens of hours of slogging through mediocrity needed to find them.

 

Quick Summary:

+ Tons of content

+ Environments are technically solid and sometimes beautiful

+ Solid party with a standout character in Jaal

+ Plenty of customization options for Ryder

+/- Combat is fun but largely feels like a watered down version of what was in the last game

- Very little party customization

- Uninspired, lackluster storytelling, both in the main plotline and sidequests

- Few interesting moral choices

- Bland art direction in open environments

- Poor sidequest design

- Scanning is a chore

- SAM

- The Nomad isn’t fun to drive

- Ugly character models

- Extremely buggy and unpolished

- Major balance issues with combat

- A soundtrack so forgettable I forgot to mention it in the review

Let's focus for a second on why Scirusians (squirrels) seem to have become the dominate species socially in Mobius? Why do you guys think that is the case?

I'm with By-Tor on this one.

I can't speak for EoT, but in SatAM there's no indication that this is the case. All we see are two members of a single royal line. We don't see any other squirrels in Mobotropolis, while we know nothing about other societies unless you count the Wolf Pack, which obviously didn't have any squirrels. On the other hand, you have Sir Charles, Julian, Dirk, Griff, and Pollo, all members of other species who achieved leadership positions of some sort. Sally and Max were presumably born into positions of leadership due to their personal ancestry dating back to someone with a great accomplishment, not their species.

While a number of others come close, I shall go with "The Doomsday Project."

Though certainly not perfect, it is superbly paced and represents the culmination of numerous plot threads from earlier in the season, including the other Freedom Fighter groups, the Deep Power Stones, and of course the titular superweapon itself. This extends to character arcs as well: Robotnik's growing obsession with Sonic to the point of madness finally results in a tactical blunder that costs him everything, at which point Snively's bitterness and secret ambitions at last come to the forefront as he assumes his uncle's mantle of power. The result is a story that boldly obliterates the series' status quo, an approach almost unheard of in Western animation at that time. While Ben Hurst and the rest of the show staff sadly were never able to continue the series in this new direction, the cliffhanger they left us with is so full of mystery and promise that it continues to inspire fans to this day, over two decades later.

However, as grandiose and earth-shattering as the events of the episode are, it is ultimately a very small, quiet moment that makes it my favorite. As he prepares to head off to what he knows will be, one way or another, his final battle, Sonic is stopped by Sally, who refuses to let him go alone. Fearing for her safety, he protests, but she's adamant, replying that they are in this together...no matter how it ends. There's an unspoken grimness to her words, a very clear understanding that they will in all likelihood die. She doesn't offer empty platitudes about hope or protecting one another, making no effort to disguise the dark truth. Yet she's not driven by fatalism or despair, but determination and love. With the fate of all life on the line, she at last allows herself to make a reckless decision not as a princess who needs to consider tomorrow, but as Sally, someone who has been to Hell and back with her best friend and now cannot conceive of leaving his side as he marches into the jaws of death. It is the ultimate assertion that, for all their differences and squabbles, they are equals, partners, and soulmates.

The August update is out.

Credit for the character of Evangeline goes to E. Mason over at Fans United for SatAM, who created her for the site's excellent Sea3on webcomic. Check it out here: http://www.sonicsatam.com/sea3on/

The rest of the day passed without incident. True to her word, Sally tried not to dwell on the more unsettling aspects of her conversation with Tabitha, instead focusing on whatever task lay before her. The exchange had no outward effect upon her, save that she was perhaps more diligent in her studies, more likely to allow her gaze to linger on works of art that she passed by. Soon the sun completed its journey across the westward horizon, leaving in its wake the soft shades of night, which slowly spread out to wrap the land in quiet embrace. Desiring to be well-rested for the proceedings of the following evening, Sally readily yielded to their advance and retired early.

Sinking into her luxurious bed, she reached over and switched off the nightstand lamp, leaving the room in near total darkness and quiet. Bereft of most of its usual stream of sensory stimuli, her mind turned inward, peacefully reflecting on the day’s occurrences. She thought of her wonderful new dress, of all the effort and meaning that had gone into it, and briefly pondered whether she herself would someday learn to express herself through art. Miss Tabitha called dressmaking “the language of her soul.” But how do I figure out what my soul’s language is? Does everyone have a soul language? Heh, I don’t see Sonic making art. Although…it would be…be pretty funny…if it was… Her thoughts began to blur, leaving it more and more difficult to continue her musings. They quickly ceased entirely, as her consciousness drew in on itself and sunk deep into her mind, surrounded by the warm emptiness of sleep.

The void was soon filled, however, for the loss of lucidity marked a loss of control, the lowering of barriers and restraints she had fashioned within her mind. Without such safeguards, the unconscious self was free to move unchecked…and assert a will of its own.

She was sitting alone in a rowboat out on a lake. A thick veil of white mist encircled her, limiting eyesight in any direction to only a few meters. It was quiet, the waters around her still, and though she did not recall how she had come to be there or for what purpose, such things did not seem to matter. She was relaxed, at peace, and for a time was content to simply sit and enjoy the tranquility. Gradually, however, a growing disquiet began to form in her gut. Something was wrong, but she lacked the faintest idea as to what it could be.

Suddenly, the surrounding silence was shattered. All around her were the sounds of screaming and cries for help, burning flames and frantic splashing. Moments later, a forceful gale tore through the mists, sweeping them aside. As Sally held onto the boat for dear life, she looked up…and was horrified. She was not on a lake, but in Mobotropolis! The city had been flooded, the waters consuming the lower districts and the first stories of the upper levels. What few buildings still protruded out were aflame, filling the air with smoke that caused her eyes to water. Through the tears, she could see people scattered throughout the water, clinging to debris. Grabbing the boat’s oars, she furiously rowed toward the nearest group of survivors, yet even as she did so, one of them lost his grip, sinking down into oblivion. Another had done so by the time she reached them, leaving only one left. With all her strength, Sally managed to pull the soaking woman aboard. As she did, a thousand heads turned as one toward her, shouting, “Princess! Please, help us!” Though overwhelmed by emotion and confusion at the destruction and chaos before her, she hurriedly rowed toward the next group, of whom she managed to save two. Then she moved to the next group. And the next group. And the next group. All too soon, the boat was filled to the point of barely keeping afloat, the number of rescued utterly miniscule compared to the tally of the doomed. Again and again, they cried out for Sally to save them, yet she could do nothing more.

Suddenly, a familiar voice could be heard amidst the clamor. “Sal! Please! Ya gotta do somethin’! I can’t hold on!” Mortified, she searched for its source, but could not find Sonic anywhere. “Please, Sally!” he begged, his voice increasingly weak. “I’m not gonna make it! I’m…not…” He trailed off into nothingness, and a moment later Sally heard a splash from somewhere behind her.

Panic gripped her, but it was outweighed by a cold determination to do whatever it took to save her best friend. “Hold on, Sonic!” she yelled as she stood up, preparing to dive overboard after him. Yet before she could jump, she was grabbed from behind by the outstretched arms of those she had already saved.

“Princess! Don’t abandon us! We need you!” they pleaded in unison, pinning her to the bottom of the boat. She struggled to break free, but to no avail. Minutes passed, and as it became clear that there would be no saving Sonic…that there would be no saving anyone else at all…she succumbed to grief and began sobbing.

“I’m sorry!” she wailed. “I’m so, so sorry. I couldn’t save all of you! I tried, but I just couldn’t do it…”

“You could have, but you were weak,” boomed a voice that was at once recognizable and strange. Where loving warmth should have been, there was only cold cruelty. Concern and compassion had been replaced by disdain and derision.

Unable to believe her eyes, Sally stared up at her father, standing atop one of the burning buildings. His body was wreathed in flames, yet remained unharmed. “Daddy!” she pleaded, “Please, do something! I’m scared! I…I don’t know what to do!”

“That is precisely the problem, you pathetic little wretch,” he sneered. “You were supposed to lead this people, this city, but as all began to fall into ruin, you sat by and did nothing. By the time you awoke from your stupor, it was far too late.” As he spoke, ghostly apparitions appeared around him; though Sally did not recognize any of them, they were so akin to her father in features and garb that she realized they must be her ancestors, the kings and queens of the past. “It’s not as though I asked much from you. All you had to do was fill the throne for a few years. Maintain the status quo. Clearly, I was mistaken to believe you could achieve even that.”

Words failed Sally. How could her loving father say such terrible things? Were they true? Was all of this somehow actually her fault?

There was a deafening crack beneath her, and suddenly a jolt of pain shot up her spine, as searing hot water began surging into the boat. The vessel collapsed under its own weight, dumping those aboard into a watery grave below. Despite the pain, Sally tried to swim, to stay afloat, but she was dragged down by those she thought she had saved, still clinging to her. As she went under, the last things she heard were the scornful words of her father, echoed by the spirits of the past.

“For centuries, our family has ruled this land. Such a shame that the line should end with the likes of you.”

The world went black, her senses dead to everything save the sound of screaming. Presently, she realized that the noise was only coming from herself. Given that she was neither soaked nor scalded, as well as able to breathe and scream rather than choking and making strangled gurgling noises, she quickly concluded that she was currently in no danger of drowning. That calmed her down slightly, enough that she managed to stop screaming, though her breath still came in ragged gasps. Tentatively feeling around her surroundings revealed the familiar soft fabric textures of sheets, pillows, and stuffed animals, suggesting that she was not dead either, but in her own bed.

Was…was it just a dream? It seemed so real, so horrible…

The absolute blackness was at last breached by a bright light as a doorway swung open. Resisting the impulse to start screaming again at the sudden intrusion, Sally rubbed her eyes, trying to clear her vision. As it adjusted, she could make out Evangeline Depardieu, Captain of the Royal Guard, silhouetted against the doorway, hand on the hilt of her sheathed sword.

“What is ‘appening, My Princess?” she called out in her thick Trivarine accent. “Are you alright?”

“I…I think so,” Sally replied as she tried to calm her breathing, the words feeling hollow. “It must have just been a bad dream, but…” The images replayed themselves in her mind, startlingly vivid. Her home, engulfed by fire and flood. Being unable to save anyone. Losing Sonic. Her father’s scorn and disappointment…she began crying, wishing the dreadful memories would just go away.

The uniformed coyote sat down on the edge of the bed next to her, wrapping an arm around her back. “Oui. Oui. Zey can be terry-ble zings, ze nightmares. I do not get zem myself very often anymore, but my own little one does. You have met my Antoine, no?”

“A few times,” Sally nodded with a sniffle, recalling the timid young coyote who, though polite, always seemed on the verge of jumping at his own shadow. He had come across as the very opposite of Sonic, and she suspected that the two would not get along well if they ever met.

“Well, what I have found ‘elps ‘im is to talk about ze dreams,” Evangeline continued. “Zey seem scary at ze time, oui, but they are often not making much of ze sense. Bringing zem out into ze light reveals zis, and it and it makes it easier not to be afraid of zem. Some nightmares even seem quite silly in ze retrospect! Zere was one my little ‘Twan mentioned in which all ze butter in ze kingdom had been replaced with m-“

“This wasn’t like that,” Sally interrupted darkly, annoyed at the seeming condescension, at the casual dismissal of something so horrific. She had weathered such bad dreams before, ‘experiences’ so trivial or absurd that she scarcely gave them a second thought upon awakening. But this… This was not remotely akin to forgetting to do a mathematics assignment or being chased by a swarm of flying books. It was far darker, far more intense, than anything her mind had hitherto conjured.

Evangeline frowned, clearly taken aback by her brusque interjection. “But of course, My Princess,” she hurriedly replied in a reassuring tone that was tinged ever so slightly with annoyance. “It was not my intent to offend. I was merely suggesting zat sometimes…” Her words trailed away with a frustrated sigh. “Perhaps I am not being ze best person to discuss zis with. Shall I awaken Madam Rosie or His Royal Majesty? You are of course closer to zem, and I am sure both would be ‘appy to ‘elp with zis matter.”

Sally was now awake enough to be largely lucid, and she took several moments to consider the offer. It was possible that speaking about the matter would help, though she could not see how. What could they say that would bring her peace? Simply reassuring her that it was just a dream, that none of it had been real, would do no good; it was obvious that the city remained untouched by fire or flood, that its people, her people, were safe. For whatever reason, that knowledge brought little comfort, its light seeming cold and dim, eclipsed by a haze of painful emotions that refused to fade. Talking about the dream would surely draw that haze closer to her, wrapping her in its suffocating grip as she relived that ghastly phantom apocalypse. It was not something she was sure she could bear again so soon, and it was certainly not worth contending with unless lasting comfort was an assured result. Rosie cared for her, but their relationship lacked a certain…closeness…that seemed requisite to dispelling that wretched murk. As for her father…

Such a shame the line should end with the likes of you.

The cold, condescending words of the apparition echoed in her mind, and to her shame Sally found herself unwilling to turn to her own father. How could she? How could she look him in the eye and reveal that she had, however unintentionally, thought him capable of such cruelty? Her father was, without question, the greatest person she had ever known, a paragon of virtue and beacon of leadership, a man who attended to the needs of an entire nation yet reserved the innermost chambers of his heart, the deepest and purest wellsprings of love and tenderness, for his daughter, for her and her alone. For some unknown part of her mind to have rejected that truth, to have envisioned him as having a scornful, chiseled heart, after all he had done…perhaps she was unworthy of being his heir after all.

Thinking like this isn’t going to help. Need to get out. Clear my head.

“No…No thank you,” Sally at last replied aloud. “Both of them had long days attending to the banquet preparations, and I don’t want to disturb them. Would it be alright if I went for a walk instead? I don’t want to try going to sleep again just yet.”

“If zat is what you wish,” Evangeline nodded, her eyes tinged with concern and uncertainty. “I shall be accompanying you, of course.”

The hallways of the palace were still, their silence unbroken, save for the echoing footfalls and soft breaths of the princess and guard as they crossed the ornate floors of marble tile. The emptiness was of stark contrast to the steady flow of servants and soldiers, artisans and aristocrats, that the finely hewn stone walls bore witness to during the day, as though the inhabitants of the city faded into and from existence with the sun’s rising and setting, in their absence leaving behind a hollow shell of a world. Sally had hoped to find some measure of peace in the tranquility, or at least diversion from the grisly sights that had seeped into the eyes of her soul, for such nighttime walks had proven relaxing before. Yet now the cavernous chambers seemed to only echo the feelings she carried into them, the state of her thoughts twisting her perceptions. She did not observe the lavish architectural nuances, the carved intricacies of the columns or the flowing patterns of gilded metal that stood faithful watch on both sides of the staircases, though she knew them to be there. It was the high ceilings, the sheer scale of the rooms, that held her notice, leaving her seeming small and fragile. It was the dim glows of the lamps set into the walls, around which shadows pooled like doubt at the edge of thought.

She had known these halls all her life. It was a strange thing, that they could remain unchanged and yet now seem so different…

It was becoming apparent that these corridors carried no consolation for her, and yet she continued to wander, her feet taking her she knew not where, Evangeline ever remaining close behind her in a silent vigil that should have brought comfort but instead inexplicably worsened the aching disquiet in her heart. Eventually, Sally found herself standing out on a balcony, gazing at the city below. Mobotropolis. She had never set foot outside the walls of the Theiapelen capital, yet harbored no longing to, no desire to see the wider world, for how could anything be of equal beauty or wonder? It challenged the boundaries of her imagination, to attempt to conceive of a paradise formed by nature or artifice forged by man that could eclipse her home in its glory. The white walls of the city had ever served as tireless, faithful sentinels since time immemorial, immortal bulwarks that stood fast against whatever terrors lurked in the wider world. Immediately beyond them, however, there was no gathering shadow, no rising malignancy stalking the land as it sought entry. There was only lush farmland, fields of wheat and barley just beginning to wear a golden tinge in anticipation of the coming harvest. Clear and cool rivers meandering freely into the horizon. Small villages humbly resting under the watchful gaze of the monolithic capital.

In the distance stood a vast network of enormous trees said to be as old as the deepest foundations of the city. The Great Forest; so named out of not any dearth of creativity, but simple truth, for it was without peer, a testament to the natural world so massive and intricate that it nearly rivaled Mobotropolis in majesty. Yet even it fell short to what was within those walls. For nearly two thousand years, the city had stood, over the centuries growing and shifting as its inhabitants constructed new tiers, each drawing nearer to the heavens than the last, and labored to improve and refine aging districts, in their vigilance suffering no onset of rot or decay. And so it was that its every aspect, from the streets of the lowest quarter to the crest of the tallest tower, bespoke only the finest craftstmanship, a blending of artistry spanning many generations. Sally had always found the city beautiful, but now she appreciated it anew, looking through the lens of Tabitha’s impassioned words. Every part of it, each fountain and statue, hanging garden and curve of architecture, was a work of art, a means of expression, carefully designed to reflect the sublime currents of its creator’s soul.

Alone, they were beautiful, but together? Together they were the voice of her people, culture made manifest and immortal, a melody in which the voices of those long since passed still resonated with power and clarity, joined in perfect concert with the living.

Then the exquisite vista was marred, its purity tainted, as in her mind’s eye Sally imagined torrents of water surging through the streets and alleys, swallowing whole what little they did not rip apart; gouts of flame on rooftops, sending pillars of smoke and a suffocating stench into the air. She closed her eyes, tightly gripping the guardrailing. Gradually, the mental image faded, though its implications lingered. As precious and longstanding as the city was, it was ultimately, unshakably, a fragile thing. Its beauty was no safeguard against destruction, its walls, however mighty, not impervious to every ravaging force. For whatever elaborate safeguards and ingenious defenses the greatest engineers and tacticians in all the kingdom of Theiapele might possibly devise, the preservation of Mobotropolis was not, and could never be, an absolute certainty.

That the loss of the city would be a terrible tragedy seemed a gross understatement. Even if, by some impossible turn of events, its people were preserved, spirited away to some new location and provided homes and jobs, their culture would still be devastated, crippled in song and soul as the voices of two millennia were silenced. The wounded artists still living could, in time, begin anew, though the embodied dances of their spirits that had been snatched away by fate’s caprices could never be truly replicated, even by they. But for the smothered works of hearts passed into death, there could not even be such facsimiles; they would be gone forever, beyond recovery and, in time, even recollection.

So much of her people’s identity, so much beauty, lost. To consider also the loss of life that her mind had conjured, that would doubtless result from any upheaval so cataclysmic…it was overwhelming. Exceeding comprehension.

“The city looks so peaceful, so beautiful…but is it safe?” the young princess wondered aloud, hands clenching the balcony railing. “Could all of this someday be lost?”

“An astute question, indeed. Can any among us truly claim to be safe, free beyond all doubt from the innumerable ways through which life’s flame may be snuffed out? It seems impossible. There are few certainties in this world, but the death of all flesh is among them.”

Sally spun around, startled. She had expected no reply, save perhaps from Evangeline, yet this voice had been male. Before her stood one of the only two humans she had ever met. Though nephew to Minister Julian, Sir Martin bore little resemblance to the towering general, with a short stature of scarcely more than four feet and long, thin nose that narrowed near the end. Unlike those of most Mobians, his body had neither fur nor feathers, his pale skin covered only by a patch of brown hair atop his head, trimmed neatly in a short military cut. To offset this lack of natural adornment, his clothing, a dark green officer’s uniform with a gold trim, white gloves, and black boots, was more concealing than most, covering everything below the neck.

“Yet the safety you question is not that of yourself or any one individual, but of an entire city. A city is artificial, a collection of constructs designed and created by intelligent minds,” Martin continued, joining Sally and Evangeline on the edge of the balcony. “Constructs are not beholden to so many of the weaknesses we possess…. A building, fountain, or painting does not need food, cannot suffer disease. With proper care, they can even weather any passage of time, lasting long after their creators have turned to dust.” Martin rested his arms on the railing and lowered his head, eyes closed and brow wrinkled as though deep in thought. It seemed to Sally that he was speaking more to himself than to her.

“And yet such things can, in the end, be destroyed. Even entire cities…” he sighed, bitterness and sorrow creeping into his voice. He turned to face Sally, though his eyes seemed unfocused. Distant. “I suppose, to answer your question, Princess, that the world would have to change a great deal for this city, for anything we have wrought, to be safe, incapable of being lost.”

“Zat is quite enough, Lieutenant! Ze princess is troubled already tonight, and I will not be permitting you to fill ‘er ‘ead with such gloomy thoughts!” Evangeline interjected, the authority in her voice suggesting no shortage of experience in putting subordinates in place.

“Of course, Captain!” Martin replied, snapping to attention and giving a crisp salute. If the man resented the reprimand in any way, it was not betrayed by his features. To Sally, he offered a polite nod and said, “My apologies, Princess. It was not my intent to cause you dismay. Your musings simply struck a chord with things that have been on my own mind lately. I can assure you that this city…is as safe as it has ever been.”

Sally could not help but notice that, as he said this, Martin would not look her in the eye.

She gave a mental shrug, assuming the oddity to be merely a result of tiredness or stress. “There’s no need to apologize, Sir Martin,” she assured him. “You were just speaking your mind, and I appreciate the honesty. If you don’t mind my asking, why are you out so late?”

“Indeed,” Evangeline echoed. Though one of her eyebrows was arched, her tone carried an air of only curiosity, not suspicion. “Your shift ended four hours ago, yet you are not only awake, but in uniform.”

The human sighed, seeming downcast for a moment before quickly straightening, as though he had to remind himself that he was before a superior officer. “I have not yet been home tonight, Captain. A private matter between my uncle and I has become increasingly…complicated…as of late, and I desired some privacy, or at least to spend some time away from him. I came out here to think and clear my head. May I assume that you are here for similar reasons, Princess?”

At Sally’s silent nod, he turned to Evangeline. “Captain, I’d be happy to look after the girl for you. I’ll be out here regardless, and, to be frank, I could use the company.”

“I should be getting back to my patrol…” the Mobian officer mused. “It is your decision, Princess. Ze Lieutenant is a dependable man, and you will be quite safe with him. If you would prefer I remain by your side, ‘owever, I will of course do so.”

Sally hesitated. Martin was nearly a stranger to her; she had met him only a few times, and always in the presence of others. Still, he did not seem an ill or disagreeable sort, and he certainly seemed more approachable than Minister Julian. The man was clearly in a contemplative mood, and as such was perhaps more likely than Evangeline to offer insight into the fears and doubts troubling her mind. Though it seemed unlikely, she might even be able to do the same for him! Something was clearly bothering him, and he had expressed the desire for company, after all…

“That’s very kind of you, Evangeline, but I’m sure the two of us will be fine. I don’t want to keep you from your duties. Thank you for walking with me.”

“It was my pleasure, Princess. Good night,” Evangeline replied with a short bow. After exchanging a brief salute with her fellow officer, she turned and briskly marched down the hallway, the echoing sound of her footfalls briefly lingering before giving way to silence.

For a time, the quiet remained unbroken, princess and soldier both returning their gazes to the cityscape below, Sally wondering what it meant to be responsible for something so vast and precious, Martin dwelling on some grave matter that she could not guess. As the minutes passed, she found herself increasingly seeking distraction, something to focus on that did not cast an invisible weight upon her shoulders.

“Sooo…” she spoke up, ignoring the feelings of awkwardness that the action prompted. “Sir Martin, I know it isn’t any of my business, but is there anything I can do to help with whatever’s bothering you? If you want, I could talk to Da- my father about it. He would solve the problem. If not…well, Rosie says that talking about things with someone is better than keeping them all bottled up.”

“I appreciate the offer, Princess Sally, but this…matter…between Julian and I is a very delicate and personal one.” Martin sighed, closing his eyes and kneading his brow with a gloved hand. “It is not a thing to be discussed with others, even yourself or the king.”

Sally nodded, studying him out of the corner of her eye for a few slow, solemn moments as she remembered something, a rumor borne by hushed whispers through the halls of the palace.

“Your uncle…he’s the only family you have left, isn’t he?” she whispered sadly, turning to face the human.

Martin stared at her, a flurry of emotions passing through his features in rapid succession. Surprise…worry…pain…his expressions shifted so quickly that it was difficult to glean anything more than brief, vague impressions from them. Yet one fleeting sight stood out: a fiery glare that seemed directed at not merely the princess, but everything before him, as though Martin carried some hidden rage against all the world and yet nothing within it, a fury focused on something unknowable and intangible.

A chill settled in Sally’s gut, causing her heart to shiver.

Then the moment passed, Martin’s visage soon settling on bitter resignation. “He is,” he replied simply.

Sally gave him what she hoped was an understanding smile, sympathy driving away the memory of his wrathful glare. “My best friend doesn’t have any family besides his uncle. They’re very close, and I can’t imagine one not having the other. He doesn’t really remember his parents, but he says that, though that hurts sometimes, he can always count on his uncle to help with the pain. I…I guess I’m like that, too. I may be surrounded by guards and attendants, but they’re not family members. Even Rosie isn’t really family. There’s just Daddy and me.”

She sighed, wrapping her arms around herself as thoughts and memories rose unbidden to the forefront of her mind. Sonic believed he had a few brief, fragmented memories of his parents. However fleeting those glimpses might be, they were more than she had of her own mother, of whom she lacked even the faintest recollection. She was never spoken of, the subject hurriedly changed whenever Sally asked of her; no displayed photographs or portraits; no wistful, fond tales of her life told before bedtime. In fact, other than Sally’s own existence, everyday life held scarcely any indication that King Maximilian Acorn the Second had ever had a queen, save perhaps the constant sadness lingering in the corner of his eyes, never spilling outward beyond its glass confines except in those rare moments when he thought he was alone.

For her part, Sally perceived her mother only as a sense of absence. It did not hurt, per se, as there was no feeling of loss. There was just an emptiness, an undefined void in her heart that only coalesced into aching clarity when she saw other children being loved by their own mothers. Such moments sometimes stung a bit, and though she was taught that envy was a vice, she had nonetheless allowed it to touch her on more than one occasion. Being around certain people would, at times, seem to start to fill the absence. Rosie, with her caring efforts to help raise her, was an obvious candidate for a mother figure, as was Evangeline, ever watchful and protective. Even Miss Tabitha, with her words of wisdom and warm embrace, had echoed many of the traits that Sally felt a mother would have. But in the end, the emptiness remained; though it was through no fault of their own, each of those women simply lacked a connection with Sally that could even begin to compare to the bond the young princess had with her father.

Her father loved her. Deeply and unconditionally. Not as a princess or some abstract symbol of the future, but as a person. As his daughter. She could have been destined to become nothing more than a lowly farmer, and his love would not have waned in the slightest for it. This was an absolute, a gleaming, objective truth that was immutable and unshakable, regardless of circumstances or the passage of time. It was her foundation, an ever-present source of identity and security.

I have nothing to fear from him.

The thought was so obvious, yet it struck Sally as an epiphany, banishing many of the concerns stirred up by her nightmare, exposing them for the hollow lies that they were. Lucidity had revealed the cold specter envisioned by her subconscious to be nothing like her father; that much, she had already known. But she saw now that he would not judge her for conjuring such thoughts, nor think ill of her anxieties and fears regarding the future. She had been ashamed to go to him about the dream, but shame had no place in her father’s presence.

“I know what it’s like to have someone important missing from your life,” Sally continued aloud, a warm conviction growing in her heart. “It can hurt, leave you wishing things were different. But that only makes the people you do have with you more important. If you and your uncle only have each other…well, I hope that you manage to stay close, no matter what’s going on. We all need family, after all. I know I’d be lost without mine.”

Now, Martin was looking directly at her, the faint glimmer of a tear cascading down his cheek before being torn from his body and lost in the freefall of gravity’s inexorable force. As it burst upon hard stone below, he spoke, his voice an almost pleading whisper steeped with a strange remorse. “Dear child, why must yours be such a compassionate soul? You are so innocent, so full of life and promise. Those such as you deserve a better world than that in which we live, a world where safety and freedom are more than the fragile, soothing deceits we shroud ourselves in. I want to believe that you could give it to them, that, through your leadership, your generation should be spared the horrors that mine has suffered. Truly, I do. Yet I know in my heart that, through no fault of your own, it is an impossibility, that the burden before me must be carried or all will ultimately come to ruin, even as your kind words make that certainty all the more agonizing.” He closed his eyes, clenching a fist as his tone became harsher, angrier. “So often, he has seemed to me cold. Callous. Thinking of people in the abstract and treating them as mere numbers. Now I am beginning to see why. Perhaps it is necessary to shoulder this weight.”

He spun around, slamming a gloved fist against the wall, his voice rising to a choked cry. “Is it so wrong that I envy his conviction!?” he seethed behind gritted teeth, so caught up in whatever maelstrom of doubt and emotion was plaguing his mind that he now seemed oblivious to Sally’s presence. “Is it so terrible to wish for the courage to do what must be done, to be more than a spineless, sniveling coward??!”

For her part, Sally was increasingly baffled by the human’s cryptic words. Even more alarming were his violent swings of emotion. She did not feel threatened by the man, for his anger seemed directed inward, yet it was clear that something was deeply wrong.

“S-Sir Martin?” she uncertainly asked, starting to reach a hand out to him before deciding against it. “I don’t understand. What are you talking about?”

Martin slowly turned around, boring into the princess with the haunted eyes of a man who had gazed into the mouth of Hell.

“I am afraid, Sally Acorn. Afraid for the future. And there’s not a damn thing you or your father can do about it.”

Under normal circumstances, Sally would have been aghast at Martin’s use of one of Rosie’s “Paddle Words”, yet here the transgression seemed trivial, a mote amidst a freezing eclipse: the black void of despair blotting out every trace of hope’s light in the man before her. Whatever the nature of the bleak envisioning that had possessed Martin’s mind so potently, it was clearly of enormity in scope, a doom striking far more than he, his family, or perhaps even the kingdom itself. Its cause was unknowable to Sally, making it all the more ominous, yet the young heiress nonetheless saw in it a reflection of her own soul.

Floodwaters smothering her city as fires burned overhead. Frantic hands clutching her, holding her down. Helplessly watching as the lifeless body of her best friend faded into the murk…

The paternal apparition and its cruel words, at least, remained banished, unable to stand before her renewed assurance of her father’s boundless love. Yet the other aspects of the dream lingered in her thoughts, the fears that spawned them continuing to trouble her.

“I’m scared, too,” Sally eventually replied sadly. When Martin offered no response in voice or visage, she continued. “Scared for the future, I mean. I’ve always known that I’m a princess, of course, but am only just now starting to get what that means. When I’m older, the job of taking care of all this will fall to me.” She gestured to the sweeping expanse below the balcony, to the grand city and lands beyond, before sighing and slumping down against the wall opposite Martin. “I mean, how am I supposed to do that? What if people get hurt because I make a mistake? I’m trying not to worry about this stuff — I even promised a friend that I wouldn’t —but I can’t even sleep without getting nightmares about it! Sheesh, I can’t even keep a promise…”

Martin sat down as well, hands resting on his knees as he faced Sally. They remained that way in silence for a time, the human gradually calming down while the squirrel did her best to focus on counting the number of floor tiles she could see without moving, hoping to distract herself from her anxieties.

“Is that why you were out here, then? A nightmare?” Martin asked at one point. Sally nodded, hugging her legs before the quiet of night resumed its reign.

“That was a foolish thing to promise: not being afraid,” the lieutenant eventually continued. “No offense intended to you or whomever asked it of you, of course. It’s a noble goal, after all…just a futile one. As ‘cultured’ individuals, we prefer to fancy ourselves our own masters, the sovereign rulers of our souls, regardless of external circumstances. Even the lowliest beggar may turn his gaze inward and enter a realm where he seems king. But such notions are comforting lies, delusions we so desperately cling to in order to avoid the truth, which could not be more different. Within the sphere of the mind, it is not the beggar who is king…it is the king who is slave. We are all slaves, Sally. Slaves to our baser selves, to the darker emotions that lurk within the subconscious. Hate. Greed. Lust. Pride. Envy. And yes, fear. You have been taught to abhor these vices, to shun and suppress them; and rightly so, for when allowed to run rampant, they are the causes of every atrocity this world, or any other, has ever known. Yet even the most virtuous and disciplined among us do not, cannot, know purity. For our darker sides cannot be destroyed, only walled away. Like water behind a dam, they lie in wait, building in pressure. And should a chink in the dam appear, even for a moment, the pent up wickedness will surge through, ravaging the conscious self and poisoning the body’s actions. To be sure, the virtuous man who finds himself in the aftermath of his own iniquity will regret his actions, bottling his vices once more and perhaps trying to make amends. But it matters little, as the misdeed is still done…and he will find that, the next time his moral dam is tested, it is weaker for it.”

Sally frowned, weighing the man’s glum words against her own experiences. “That might be true for some people, but not everyone. I know my father’s no slave to evil!”

“The king is a good man, as far as such a thing can be truly said of a person. One of the finest of your line, by most accounts. But he is not perfect,” Martin replied, shaking his head. “Like the rest of us, he has his limits, his weaknesses. Put him under enough strain or force him to choose between virtue and that which he is unwilling to lose…” He looked pointedly at Sally. “…and he will surely crumble.” Before the princess could raise an indignant protest, he raised a hand to silence her. “Do not be offended, Princess Sally. It is not my intent to speak ill of your father; in fact, I respect him a great deal. I am merely pointing out the simple, unfortunate truth: he is no less bound to this curse, this vile taint of the spirit, than you or I. In truth, he bears it better than most. There are far, far too many beings in this world with scarcely any regard for morality at all, who freely let themselves be dominated by their instincts and impulses, resulting in countless terrible acts, the natures of which you are best spared.” He shuddered, bitterly clenching a fist. “We call ourselves men and women, yet in so many ways are little more than beasts. Worse! For at least beasts lack ambition and intellect, tools as immensely dangerous as they are powerful, and so are limited in their destructive potential. In the worst of circumstances, a predator may doom a family…” He closed his eyes and lowered his head, a sense of defeat upon his features. “…a person can doom a city. A nation. A species.”

Sally’s grip around her legs tightened as she considered the glum proclamation. She was no philosopher, no great scholar of the mind used to contemplating existence, but her education had nonetheless given her the beginnings of certain beliefs regarding such matters. Among them was the notion that sentient beings, Mobian and human alike, were sacred, gifted with a divine spark that created a fundamental, unbridgeable divide separating them from mere animals. Martin’s description of people as little more than intelligent beasts doomed to be controlled by their base natures was at odds with this. It was certainly a more disheartening worldview, particularly when considered alongside her mounting anxieties toward eventual leadership. If she could never truly rule her own mind, how could she be trusted to rule a nation? The throne would magnify the consequences of her actions a thousand times over. Orders given in moments of petty anger or jealousy could have disastrous effects…as could indecision borne of fear, the very emotion she now struggled in vain to control, that had crept up from subconscious depths to smother her in her sleep.

Martin’s weary description of the magnitude of harm a single person could cause echoed in her mind. Even if it was not true for the average individual, it would be for her. She would have that kind of power. Perhaps, one day, the only thing standing between her world and ruin would be the moral dam in her heart, strained to the breaking point…

The thought made her want to cry, but before her first tear was shed, kind, gentle words leapt from her memories to embrace her spirit.

There’s no need to be afraid, because there’s another path still, and it’s the one that I genuinely believe we will travel.

Tabitha had hope. Like Martin, the seamstress was clearly carrying the scars of the past. Both had seen terrible things that Sally could not begin to understand. Both realized the weight of the crown on the future of the world. And both knew that their future queen was a scared, confused little girl. But where Martin saw just another slave to vice and instinct, doomed to never truly rise above her own inner darkness, Tabitha saw the makings of greatness, the key to healing the wounded world and guiding it into a golden age.

Sally felt the warm glow return to her heart. There are people out there who believe in me, even when I don’t believe in myself. If I’m going to honor them, to serve them as queen, I can’t give up. She shakily rose to her feet, looking down at the man before her, so beaten and broken by despair. I won’t give up. Though still troubled and uncertain, she at last saw what she needed to do. She needed help. She needed the one person she trusted most in all the world.

“I need to see my father.”

Deep within the swaying hold of one of the galleons, Indriell Istui sat huddled against the coarse blanket the ship's crew had provided, trying to stay warm. She gave a half-amused snort at the irony of it all: she was traveling to Qadesh, a desert nation known for its searing sands, and yet here she was, freezing as the vessel she was aboard lurched first one way, then the other, buffeted about by gale-force winds. There was a scuffling movement to her left and she turned, startled, before gasping in surprise. A large rat, soaked with water, had crawled its way from elsewhere in the ship to settle down a few feet away, likely attracted by the warmth of the lantern next to her, another temporary provision from the sailors. There was a brief flash of revulsion in her mind at the sight of the creature, but it was soon joined by pity.

"I suppose you're cold too, hmm, little one? Well, there's no harm in you remaining there...provided you come no closer," she mused, staring at the animal as she ended the sentence, as if to inform it she was serious.

 Thankfully, the rat seemed content to comply. Her journey was only beginning, and the last thing she needed was to suffer some malady transmitted by a diseased rodent.

Suddenly, the creature raced toward her, biting her exposed finger. With a whispered curse, Indriell swatted the animal away, causing it to retreat into the shadows. Holding the extremity up to the light, she sighed in relief; the skin had not been broken. No chance of infection.

Settling deeper into the blanket, Indriell felt her racing heart calm after a few seconds, though she continued to keep a watchful eye in the direction the rat had gone.

As cold and unseemly as the hold was, at least it was faring better than other areas of the vessel. It was relatively dry, after all. As she thought of the rest of the ship, Indriell felt a flicker of concern for the crew and other passengers. It had been some time since she had heard from them.

Not wanting to get up and let her hard-earned warmth dissipate, she called out in a loud voice, "Excuse me? Can someone inform me as to whether we are nearing our destination?"

There was a loud creak. Indriell noticed it once again and again, much like footsteps above her head... Then, there were murmurs, sounds in a guttural cante indistinct to her ears barely piercing through the shiplap. 

 

Note: I originally wrote this for the Fans United for SatAM forum back in 2012 and am reposting it here at the request of @TheRedStranger. I have not read the novel in question since then, so my contributions to any discussions in this thread will be limited.

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A few hours ago, I finished reading George Orwell’s 1984, during much of which I found myself drawing rather intense comparisons to a certain Saturday Morning Cartoon. Major spoilers for the work will invariably follow, though I’ll try to be vague. If this is rather incoherent, I apologize; I spent the entire night reading and am exhausted, but want to get this off my chest before going to sleep, which will likely muddle my thoughts and quell any desire of even writing this.

Most fictional works I experience, classics or no, fail to elicit a strong emotional reaction from me, but 1984 was an exception. It was horrifying, due not so much to its bleak dystopic setting, which I doubt will reach any great semblance of realization within the foreseeable future, but to the utterly pessimistic conclusions it drew about human nature. The novel postulates that, given enough pain, any person can be so completely broken as to disavow reality, not just externally but to themselves, that one’s belief in truths so basic as two plus two equaling four can be altered to suit the whims of another. Even love, Orwell seems to argue, that most treasured of emotions, is not exempt. Except it’s not a forcible change at all; the ultimate, damning act of submission, of betrayal, comes from within. And it always occurs.

Almost as terrifying is the notion that such pain isn’t even required in most cases. Simple conditioning is enough to usually ensure complete obedience, in thought as well as action. People will be told to believe something they know to be wrong and they wholly accept it without hesitation, so that, save for in a fleeting, invisible objective sense, it becomes true.

The origins of the INGSOC society in which the novel occurs are never fully detailed (assuming that the book Winston read on the matter was indeed inaccurate), but there remains a sense throughout that it is inexorable, inevitable, both in its emergence and in its growth. I may be mistaken in the former point, if 1984 was indeed written as a warning against socialism (implying the possibility of prevention), but Orwell seemed to see the rise of such a society as unavoidable, or at least that the permanent loss of freedom for all people was a very real possibility.

I by no means entirely concur with Orwell on the matter; hours later, the emotions I experienced reading the novel have long since cooled, and I doubt I will consider the work life-changing in any meaningful sense. Yet the fact remains that, whether due to the quality of writing or my tired condition, I found myself gripped by the terrible hideousness of the novel’s final act, forced to confront these grim beliefs that, forged in the aftermath of the atrocities of the Second World War, are not easily dismissed as unfounded cynicism.

As I read the last third of 1984, my mind issued again and again an almost unconscious “NO!”, a rebuttal, grounded more in emotion and raw simple knowing than any coherent logic, that what O’Brien, what Orwell, was saying is untrue, that good can and will prevail, that there exists a part of the human soul that is unquenchable. Though this wellspring of bitter emotion was in part driven by my spiritual beliefs, it also stemmed from themes and concepts that I saw in other works and life in general, those few that are profound and beautiful enough to shape one’s identity.

As it happened, what thus personified this secular side to my insistence that Orwell’s bleak view of human nature was wrong was not the writings of some Greek philosopher, nor the message of a classic piece of literature. It was a young man and woman who dared stand against the monster that had enslaved their world…and won. It was Sonic and Sally.
It sounds ludicrous, I know. It likely is, using a children’s television program starring talking animals to mentally counter one of the most influential works of literature of the twentieth century. It isn’t as if SatAM’s this profound source of life-shaking philosophical wisdom, a source of inspiration that dwarfs all other works in my eyes. Yet I find beauty in it, have found myself pondering the show, its settings, its characters, its themes, a great deal ever since I was re-introduced to it last year. There’s something so.... compelling about them, that transcends those twenty-six episodes, a fair number of which I found mediocre or in a couple of cases flat-out terrible. When I began 1984, I was already looking forward to comparing the dystopian setting of the novel to Robotropolis, Big Brother’s indoctrination to the possible mental effects of roboticization.

And so, for whatever reason, SatAM was on my mind when I concluded 1984, watching with growing horror and eventual resignation as Winston’s soul was utterly violated, utterly destroyed, from without and ultimately within. The novel gave a great deal more understanding to one of the reasons I love SatAM:

It’s optimistic.

Though many dissimilarities between the two exist, the settings of SatAM and 1984 share a similar foundation: extremely controlled, ordered worlds governed by a ruthless and tyrannical figure, whether literal or figurative, whose inhabitants have been conditioned against any possible dissenting thought. Yet where Orwell believed escape from such a system to be ultimately impossible, Hurst and the other writers argued that it is possible for goodness and hope to exist amidst oppression and tyranny, that against all odds they can not only sustain people but, as illustrated through Uncle Chuck’s rescue, break through the webs of lies tyranny enthrones itself upon and even put an end to such evil (cliffhanger notwithstanding).

Sonic and Sally, though both flawed, are in a sense themselves embodiments of concepts that simply cannot exist in the Orwellian society once its noose has been tightened. Sonic is playful irreverence and unshakable self-confidence, a source of joy stemming from simply being, from living as oneself. Sally is selfless love and nurturing, a leader who does not seek power but places the weight of the world on her shoulders so that it will not have to be borne by those she cares for.

I suppose the ability of good to not simply exist but actually thrive in the face of evil is what makes SatAM so charming. Tails being read bedtime stories by his adoptive family; Sonic cracking a defiant one-liner toward Robotnik even as SwatBots close in; the playful bickering and banter amongst the Freedom Fighters; their taking pleasure in something as simple as the tree slide; the cheerful exclamation of “Let’s do it to it!”. All are elements that I find much more endearing, much more meaningful, than I normally would, due to the fact that they take place in the face of such hardship. To assert they even can take place in such a world is to reject the core of George Orwell’s 1984, to believe, as Samwise Gamgee mused, “that there’s some good in this world…and it’s worth fighting for.”
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Well, that wound up being longer than anticipated, but I needed to get out of my system both some thoughts on how the novel related to SatAM and musings on the show in general. For those who have read 1984, would you agree that SatAM is fundamentally opposed to it thematically? What are your thoughts on why the series is so memorable and potentially thought-provoking?

Welcome to our little slice of the manifestation of collective human insanity that is the Internet!

To your left, you'll find the Imaginarium, a growing plethora of creative works dedicated to Freedom Planet. I'm told that Sonic stories are also present, but I've seen no proof of this. Regardless of their subject matter, this section contains stories by both regular users and the site staff, divided into separate sub-forums for your convenience. Then again, given how incoherent and poorly structured my own inane 'creative' ramblings have become, it's entirely possible that this forum separation was a desperate attempt at quarantine, with superior works such as EoT, Sonic Mobius, and War for Mobius having the misfortune of being thrown in as part of an elaborate cover-up. If that is the case, I salute the authors of the stories in question. May their writing endure and prosper, unhindered by woeful proximity to my preposterous paragraphs.

To your right, you'll find the Meta-Forum, more commonly referred to as the Complaints Department. By posting there, you, too, can transcribe the myriad grievances that will invariably befall you within mere minutes of joining the site, all of them the result of unspeakable ineptitude on the part of our moderation staff...or rather, yours truly, given that Mike Arcade is a wonderful fellow who carries out his duties here with tact and finesse. Truth be told, the administration of Free Scribes has been seeking enough justification to strip me of my title for some time, and any incisive invective on your part could very well break the back of the poor proverbial camel, resulting in my public disgrace and mass celebrations from the rest of the community, in which you would be hailed as a hero for your noble efforts in purging the Scourge of Sorzo. Statues would be built in your image, parades held in your honor, as fireworks light the night sky for weeks on end, proclaiming that all is at last right with the world.

Vending machines are at the end of the hall.

*Crunchbite is punted through a portal into Mobius*

*Drunken chaos ensues*