My Setting - Blog Posts
I drew another Aeshnir
They’re gonna be one of the smarter Aveon races, at least in the upper parts of the caste hierarchy. Not quite sure what Aeshnir made technology would look like yet.
I still need a name for the dragon-y people on Kokoro’s planet.
I spent four days in Space Engineers making a cruiser. The innards are all screwy because of SE’s conveyor system and the turrets themselves, along with each wall being 2.5m³ along with triple and quad layered outer armor. There are many redundant systems to prevent critical disablement from damage. I was also going to build a torpedo bay, but the rocket launchers were pitifully weak and the nuke launcher was insanely slow, more likely to detonate in the bay if moving or get intercepted than actually hit the target. I’ll draw up a better Tenryuu later.
CL-2102 Tenryuu
Affiliation: Cazanan Navy
Builder: Kure Naval Shipyards; Nagara
Laid Out: 5/7/870 Great War Era
Launched 3/11/871 GWE
Homeport: Helen’s Point Naval and Marine Base; Darro
Status: In Service; 4th remodel
Length: 380m
Beam: 62.5m
Height: 102.5m
Mass: 51,300 tons (Space Engineers weight)
Zach Ritzer (Removed MC), Ryan Connar (Computer tech), Tyler Church (Squad gunner/heavy weapons specialist), John Scotts (Marksman), Erika Keenly (Regenerator), Serah Keenly (Erika’s older sister), Admiral Timothy Rich (Admiral), Chiyoko Wakahisa (Asuran), Sonja (Cazanan Marine operator), Jordis (Cazanan Marine operator/swordsman), Skjoldis (Elite Dronok Hulk operator), Tedd Jenkins (Destroyer of Worlds), Steve (Owner of Steve’s Stuff), Quran (Head of criminal tech organization), ‘Nuclear Supervisor’ (Unnamed King Ship reactor supervisor), Kokoro Kasai (1000 year old fire maiden), Sergio (Ballin so hard, NBA’s gone and fined him), The King (Dronok Overlord, main antagonist)
oc challenge: if you dare, reblog with the names of all of your OC’s you remember.
Parallax Timeline
1114 Universal Era 1 Great War Era Great War Begins 68 GWE Powder weapons invented 74 GWE Rifling Invented 87 GWE Machineguns invented 103 GWE Atomic power discovered 121 GWE First Low Orbit craft launched 201 GWE FTL drives invented 206 GWE First Colony Ships leave Ashire 224 GWE First Directed Energy Weapons produced for combat 224-226 GWE Ashire Crisis Mass exodus of Ashire 241 GWE Cazanan city of Namore on planet Glin destroyed 242 GWE Cazanan Probe discovers Dronok Space; Capital planet Bethari discovered 250 GWE Cazanans invade Bethari Dronoks discover Cazanan Space 257 GWE Cazanan patrol encounters Fronzok fleet at edge of Known Space 257-259 GWE Cazanan-Fronzok First Contact War; Cazanans surrender after substantial losses 266 GWE Dronoks invade Cazanan capital of Atos on planet Alphine Cazanans retake control of Alphine in the Second Battle of Atos 280 GWE Dronoks discover Fronzoks on planet Malrin 282 GWE Dronok terrorists raid Malrin and are defeated 340-344 GWE Dronok Rebellion; Insurgent Wars Insurgents are wiped out in the four year Battle for Ferlos 345 GWE Dronok Inquisition founded 738-742 GWE Cazanan Civil War; The Corporate Wars 987 GWE Planet Alos rendered uninhabitable 995 GWE Invasion of Delri 998 GWE Pathin destroyed by Dronok Superweapon
Messing around with building a timeline for the events in Parallax and I think I got sidetracked with the planet discovery and city founding in the 200's
Parallax
Parallax originated as a 3D action platformer where you played as a special operations cat doing battle with the evil dogs. It shifted to anthropomorphic animals and then to kemonomimis where they are at now. The gameplay also changed from a Sonic Adventure-like game with jets to a First Person Shooter, more akin to Halo.
The first written content for Parallax is from back in 2005, a stats page with weapons and vehicles names, damage and capacity, after was a walkthrough style campaign synopsis, complete with terrible spelling. Many of the items have been renamed and almost everything, if not everything, has been rebalanced. Balance then heavily favored the Cats (Cazanans). Now I feel the weapons are fairly well balanced against each other, a few exceptions being weapons I have not worked with much, semi-redundant weapons and when vehicles are involved.
In 2008 I started making a web comic, because web comics were cool, so as to help make some brackground for the Parallax universe. It is called Parallax Beginnings, in reference to how it was to take place before the main game storyline. Updates have been extremely slow and infrequent. It stopped several times for several reasons. This last stall was so as to design the characters and equipment more completely before getting too far along and having mighty morphin power armor, as seen by Church's black and red armor. It also gives me time to rewrite much of the comic's story without the need of retconning anything.
I got into those awful forum RPGs around that time as well, resulting in a Parallax RPG on the comic's forum. Be Advised the quality of posts in that time is horrendous. The RPG was run with little to no planning and acts as a semi-canon instance of the universe where I would play around with ideas and keep things I liked. Much of the resulting content is not canon, making the Parallax RP a bad reference for Parallax canon. Things that are maintained in canon from the RPG are Hellen's Point, Steve and Steve's Stuff, Sergio (The Invincible) and Quaran. It has been one of the largest contributors to the setting's background.
More recently I got the idea of "What if my characters were in a Dota?". The result was a rather large influx of new characters. Before that, the "Newest Character" was Erika Keenly, who quickly stole Main Character position in the comic and general character development from Ryan (O')Connar. Erika has not and will not have an appearance in the comic for quite some time and she is already the most developed character. The New Newest Character is actually the result of a school project. The unnamed Not-Mokou in need of a redesign. Her story is untied to the Cazanan-Dronok war, but I intend to have it tie together in the FPS, along with making her a boss.
I would quite like to make a Wiki, however I'm not sure what all I could put on it at the moment without it being mostly plot spoilers.
Spoilers
I feel it's a bit difficult to talk about my setting because, while I want to, I'm afraid of spoiling everything at the same time. I'm not sure at what point plot discussion turns into just spoilers and I've thought more about potential plots and side plots than I have just raw world facts. I also find it a bit hard to find a place to start and I need to build the context of it before I start going 'I might change this or add this'.
I keep forgetting to post this, I drew this at Starbucks the other day
Once before when I was at that Starbucks I was thinking about what kinds of animals would be in my setting and one that stuck was the Wyvernling, a little flying creature that could be found in and around Helen's Point, one of the main Cazanan cities. The Wyvernling is 6 to 8 feet long at the largest, feathery/furry and an omnivorous predator. It divebombs small animals, tacking and eating them. I was also thinking of them being an uncommon pet so they should be at least a little cute and pretty friendly. They're too bulky to perch in trees, but that doesn't necessarily stop them from sitting in trees, more like a panther than a bird. They'll have a moderate intelligence, able to understand words and phrases, but not as smart as an ape or raven. They are warmblooded mammals who mate for life and have live birth. They will attack and try to kill creatures many times their size if their young are immediately threatened and they have very sharp teeth and claws which allows them to kill much larger creatures, even if they don't actively hunt them. The lifespan in most subspecies is about 20 years with some able to live 60 or more.
I'll probably draw them much more catlike as that's what I'm currently associating them the most with, big flying cats.
Classes are over so here's the stuff from my sketchbook so far
Big Bad Setting Starter
Both factions have FTL, energy shielding, large scale directed energy weapons and control several star systems, but the majority of their infantry is void of shielding and uses kinetic weapons, most frequently a common bullet loading rifle.
The Cazanans have the largest usage of energy weapons in their standard issue Blaster Rifle, a low yield 'snub' rifle with a high fire rate and accuracy. Many of the kinetic rifles out damage it however. Infantry shielding is used almost exclusively by specialist troops and those of a high rank such as field commanders.
The Dronoks field fewer but more powerful DEWs, such as a high power cannon wielded by the Hulk units. Hulks are a special type of infantry that could be classified as a vehicle. It is a very heavy set of power armor equipped with a shield down the left arm, a dual heavy plasma blaster on the right arm and dual retractable melee blades under the left arm shield and a small reactor on their back. Their armor makes them extremely resistant to small arms fire and their cannon is powerful enough for them to singlehandedly destroy light and some medium vehicles.
Cazanan starships equip a large array of energy weapons. Their primary capital ship, the M160, is wedge shaped with overlapping lines of fire meaning that if they line a ship up in front of them, all of their heavy cannons can strike it at once. The M160 has hangars on either side as well as a vehicle bay, allowing it to carry LRVs and tanks to a planet and deploy them via dropship to the surface alongside infantry. The T177 is a frigate housing a very large flight deck, primarily fighters and bombers with a few transports for the few marines it may house. The T177 also carries two particle cannons, the most powerful single weapon in the Cazanan fleet. The cannons are retractable on the underside of the ship, used for damage dealing against large ships and ground bombardment. Other Cazanan ships are not currently made.
Dronok starships use a lot of Magnetic Acceleration Cannons and railguns with a few directed energy weapons. Their P13 Battleship is a long, sleek ship that has four forward facing heavy MACs which put a hurt on shields and rend hulls apart. It has one large hangar bay which goes through the width of the ship. There are many smaller cannons and railguns down the sides of the ship. The predecessor to the P13, the P8, is essentially a huge MAC with a ship built around it. The P8's main cannon is a larger caliber than the P13's quad cannons despite the ship being half the size. The P8 lacks any sort of flight deck, but houses a large array of weapons and heavy armor capable of taking a massive amount of damage without shields.
There are also the Fronzoks (Fox people), who live in much smaller communities but control almost all the systems surrounding the Cazanan-Dronok war. They as a whole avoid the conflict, intervening only when they or their interests are threatened.
The Cazanan and Dronok's view of the galaxy is extremely narrow minded. They only acknowledge each other and the Fronzoks and only think of their immediate region of space. There are explorers who do venture off into the uncharted, frequently stopping by Fronzok worlds for supplies or advice before venturing into the unknown.