Possibly the only piece of fanfiction I have ever written, set in the Dragon Ball universe prior to the events of the series. The premise is an epic-ish retread of the basic setup of the universe premised upon the idea that a certain character knows rather more about the big picture than they let on in the series:
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Earth ('Chikyuu') is a small, backwater planet located in the Milky Way. Its inhabitants are considerably weaker than the galactic average. It has no significant material resources other than its abundant organic life. To be frank, there are only two - okay, three - facts that would give galactic sojourners cause to even notice Chikyuu:
The first fact is astronomical. Chikyuu enjoys a full moon roughly every 28 days. Whilst insignificant to the vast majority of races inhabiting the universe, it is of immense importance to one race in particular, who take very special note of every planet with a short lunar cycle they detect.
The second and third facts require some grounding in the basic facts about the universe in which we live.
The universe is big. It used to be a lot bigger. Chikyuu scientists have calculated from measurements of cosmic background radiation that the universe is at least seventy-eight billion light-years across. That figure was accurate up until approximately five million years ago. Today, the universe is about 20 billion light-years across, three quarters burned away in a conflagation of unimaginable scale. Before the searing light from this ultimate holocaust reaches us, our tiny world will have been swallowed by its senile star.
The universe is bad. As much as we cherish the notions of peace, tolerance, individual rights, empathy, these are but a flicker in the history of our world alone. Where did they come from? On almost every other planet in the whole universe it is considered socially acceptable to kill someone you dislike. There is a reason for this.
The universe is scary. Our everyday experience is so far divorced from the everyday experience of the average galactic citizen on even a backwoods trading route that it is almost inconceivable. Without any assisting technology, a strong Chikyuu-jin (that's human to you or me) could maybe crack open the head of another Chikyuu-jin, break a wooden beam in half, crack a brick. There are nearly seven billion of us on Chikyuu-sei. The planet Vegeta harbours over a trillion inhabitants. Each one could level a fair to large-sized mountain range without breaking a sweat. In the real universe, too many "don't get alongs" result in an extinction-level event. It also means that the races which tend to survive to develop interstellar travel are the most ruthless and authoritarian, and the most socially conformist.
There are holes in the universe. Chikyuu scientists have in recent years been baffled by the vast, ragged voids where there should be healthy stars and galaxies. Words like "dark matter" and "weakly interacting particles" are thrown around a lot. At the same time, other scientists scratch their heads and wonder - if there really are aliens out there, why haven't we seen some evidence of them? The idea that one could be the reply to the other rarely enters their mind. What scientist dare assert that these gaping wounds in the universe are the cosmological Boojum - the "soft and sudden vanishing" of all civilisations blessed with a certain crutch to help them through those troubled adolescent centuries? But it is true. But don't feel too bad about it - the existence of this crutch isn't well known. In fact, those with the real power out there tend to think of it as a superstition. If they knew that we've had it on Earth for these past few thousand years, we would probably be a lot more popular than we are right now.
Here's the scoop, and it starts with global warming. Not here, of course, but elsewhere; a geological disaster that went misinterpreted for aeons. A species scattered across the universe, brought to the brink of extinction. The near-destruction of an ecosphere. This is the planet Namek, a world long forgotten by the universe and passed into the realm of legend. The Namek-jin weren't the only ones to fuse science and magic the way they did, but their exodus brought their particular brand of short-term wish fulfillment to its largest audience yet. Now, a long, long time ago, two Namek-jin and their offspring (I should point out that Namek-jin are hermaphrodites and capable, if necessary, of parthenogenesis, but genetic variety is always good) crash-landed on our own little dirtball. Now, do you remember the inhabitants of the planet Vegeta I told you about? Namek-jin are on average considerably stronger. Given the difference in power between Namek-jin and almost anything around these parts, it's hard to see what could have presented them with a threat. Namek-jin don't breathe in the same way we do, they derive most of their nutrients from water and sunlight, like Chikyuu-sei plants (and if there's one thing we can offer here on Chikyuu, it's nutrients), so we can rule out starvation. But nevertheless, the two adult Namek-jin left their ship to scout out the area and never returned. Maybe they killed each other. Whatever happened, the kid was left to fend for himself. Growing up as the most powerful being on the planet is bound to leave anyone with a few interesting ideas. A few complexes.
I hear you ask, Whatever became of him? I'm sorry to disillusion you, but that kid is the guy we've been calling God. Hey, at least he was old enough to know how to speak Galactic Standard - if he'd been a few years younger, we'd still be grunting, because we sure as hell weren't showing any signs of developing language any time soon. He gave us that. And he gave us the dragonballs; the source of the only miracles he couldn't accomplish through his own alien body. Theotechnological spheres designed to emit a signal bending the life energy of the biosphere, the planet itself, to the user's will. There is no other way to say this: the ridiculous fact is that the dragonballs summon a dragon from the centre of the planet to grant a boon from its caller. There are limits, of course, otherwise Namek would still be home to over 100 billion Namek-jin, but for any reasonable purpose their power is infinite. The Namek-jin had by this time enshrined their age-old caste system - the warriors who protected their sexless, undying race, and the mystics who created the dragonballs - into biology via genetic manipulation. Our guy was principally a warrior, but he must have gotten a little bit of mystic in him too; the creation of the dragonballs was hard-wired into his genes. That's not to say he got it right first time; his first attempt yielded a single crystalline orb, capable of summoning our planet's eternal dragon - a rather feeble being without even a name of his own, and usually just called Shenlong - as often as its possessor desired. A veritable genie in a lamp, without even the sanction of a limited number of wishes. Immortality, unlimited wealth. Power beyond your wildest dreams. The chaos this caused was indescribable, and for reasons that I'll explain later, brought us within a hair's breadth of becoming a void ourselves. Thankfully, our new Kami-Sama took the ball back and split it into seven - the traditional Namek-jin safeguard - scattering them over the planet for the most intrepid and foolhardy adventurers to discover. Now every time Shenlong was called to grant a wish, the balls would be dispersed again, meaning that on average the dragonballs were used only once every hundred years. This sufficed, as it sufficed on most planets on which the Namek-jin ended up, until the populace at large discovered the joys of high technology. But that's another story.
So that's the second secret of Chikyuu; unknown to the vast majority of the populace, there are seven magic balls on this world that when brought together can deliver you your wildest dreams. Even the greatest universal potentates would jump at the chance of acquiring immortality or the power to give commands no-one can refuse. It's not overstating the case to say that if anyone outside our gravity well knew about the dragonballs, our planet would be stripped bare to find them.
The third secret our planet holds? It's the dirtiest of all, and if anyone who's anyone out there knew about it, they wouldn't care about the dragonballs. Our planet would be destroyed in an instant because even the most malign powers out there fear what we've got stashed away deep within the crust of our world. Do you remember the cosmic ruin of which I spoke - three-quarters of the universe reduced to its constituent quarks in a blaze of insane power? Let's go back to the fundamentals of our universe.
There has always been a God on Earth, even before our slightly unbalanced Namek-jin friend decided the post was his birthright. In fact, there's a God on every inhabited planet. You see, there's a whole heavenly bureaucracy up there (by "up there" I refer to ancient, secret orbital platforms, worlds enclosed in crystalline spheres at the heart of the universe, planes of existence beyond the ken of the most powerful interstellar tyrants). You've heard of the martial arts masters? The great hermits carrying the secrets of the world on their shoulders? They're at the bottom of the food chain. Above them are the mystics, the honest-to-god real witches and warlocks consulted in secret by world leaders and the mega-rich. Above them, the kami, the spirit-creatures and minor gods around whom so much mythology has been based. Let me tell you, they're filing clerks. They're responsible for one aspect of Earthly existence and they report to the Kami-Sama, the Lord God, our planetary supervisor, in his floating palace screened from modern sensors by occult baffles and divine omniscience. But even the Kami-Sama are not without guidance in their affairs. Each must give account of their actions to the local administrator, the Kaio-Sama or Lord of All The Worlds. Each of these immeasurably exalted beings is placed in charge of an entire galactic quadrant, and (in conjunction with the local Enma-Daio, who judges the dead and administrates their corner of the afterlife) manages tens of millions of Gods. They are the ones against whose exacting standards would-be applicants to the position of Kami-Sama are measured.
The Namek-jin had to undergo a rather painful transformation to make himself "pure" enough for the job; splitting his being into two bodies, one containing his higher, more spiritually-minded aspects, the other (a significantly smaller fraction of his being) containing his lower self. This dark side was cast down to Earth and spent long centuries scheming against the one who rules in heaven. You may have heard this story already. His main competitor, a Makyo-jin (did I tell you that we Chikyuu-jin and our attendant flora and fauna are not the original inhabitants of this sphere? The species we now know as demons and monsters came to the planet long before us from the body we call Halley’s Comet, and we drove them into the caves and underground caverns) refused this separation, and so rendered himself ineligible for godhood. The Namek-jin banished him to the Dead Zone, a place that is by anyone's definition Hell - a stillborn universe that collapsed into a superdense sea of entropy where no action is possible.
Above the Kaio-Sama, the Dai Kaio-Sama, the Grand Kai, each of whom administrates four Kais. How many Grand Kais now sit on their crumbling thrones on impossible glass spheres floating in the golden light of the afterlife? Ten billion? So many perished when the universe burst into flame. And every one worships a God they have not seen, but who communicates from beyond a veil none but his servants may cross. This is the Kaioshin, undisputed master of Creation. The emperor of the Milky Way is a being called Frieza, who possesses energies so vast that when he lifts his fingers entire planets burst like rotten fruit. So great is his power that he must utilise the shape-shifting abilities that are his racial prerogative to lock away his awful strength, lest he destroy everything around him in an instant. He considers himself the god of the universe, so superior to the guardians of the worlds he conquers so casually - yet the Kaioshin could destroy him with a wave of his hand. And he is all that remains of the heavenly host. Until five million years ago there were four Kaioshin, each administrating a quarter of the now-annihilated universe. The Kaioshin - our Kaioshin - ruled the West, the youngest and weakest of their number. Each looked with blind love towards their Master, the Dai Kaioshin. Was He God? Did He make everything we see? He would certainly have liked us to think so; the truth is we know nothing beyond about 100 million years back, where the Kais place their own genesis. And there was a war in heaven. The adversary of the Kaioshin was the most powerful sorceror to ever live - the Grand Magus Bibidi. How was it that a mere mortal (albeit one with a lifespan of millions of years) came to oppose the Dai Kaioshin? Even Bibidi himself would be hard-pressed to answer that question. His ultimate weapon in this war, the trump card that claimed quintillions of lives, was an occult accident - a freak alignment of planets, galaxies, universal centres of mass. What was born was more than a god - it was a god-eater. And at first it obeyed its creator. It carved an unimaginable swath of destruction across existence, space-time itself torn and mangled by the boundless energies unleashed. It came to the realm of the Kaioshin, tearing through that golden veil like it was rotten wool. The Kaioshin died. Designed to be immortal, they had no souls - there was no afterlife for them. The god-monster's arms bled them dry. In an immeasurable fraction of time, only the Kaioshin of the West remained, trembling before the shape that had done the impossible. Then the Dai Kaioshin intervened. His Word shattered the monster, scattered it across the universe. It reformed. The Word of the Dai Kaioshin burned it with fire, vaporised the ashes. It reformed. The Word of the Dai Kaioshin seared the beast with a trillion holy abjurations, reducing it to a puddle, scoured by the wind, evaporated by the sun. The god-monster reformed. It reached out, a black and toothy hunger in the pure white light of that exalted realm, and the Dai Kaioshin was gone. Yet the god-monster was not now as it had been. Its form had changed into the likeness of the Dai Kaioshin - a fat, jolly, capracious Buddha which now had to be goaded onto destruction. Bibidi was appalled by this alteration in his creation, but pressed on with his nihilistic mission. He used the ensorcellments only he knew to force the now only intermittently obedient beast to assume a dormant, egg-like state, transporting it throughout reality upon his planeshifting ship. It was a fatal error - the last remaining Kaioshin took advantage of this weakness to slay Bibidi and took possession of that awful shell.
The secret of Chikyuu, the one that would compel Frieza himself to sterilise the quadrant if he knew? That god-monster, that killed the stars and gorged on nebulae and tore apart black holes just to see the sparkle of their evaporating event horizon, the beast that devoured the Creator and His archangels? It's here with us. It's buried beneath our feet. Kaioshin hid it here, where he thought no-one would look. Hidden for all time from the prying eyes of cosmic necromancers and vengeful magi. I will tell you its name; the name that beings who rule galaxies tremble to hear. The name is Buu.
Let's talk about planet Vegeta. For starters, its real name is Tsufuru-sei (we would call it "planet Plant"). The now almost extinct Tsufuru-jin by all accounts arose on the planet, and established a reasonably high-technology civilisation. Then came the Saiya-jin - the supremely powerful aliens I mentioned before. The Saiya-jin are just one of the myriad offshoots of one of the most common races in the Milky Way - including amongst their innumerable variants us poor Chikyuu-jin - whose original name has been lost in the depths of time. The Saiya-jin acquired their name and distinctive features on the high-gravity world of Saiya-sei - notable amongst these features are their atavistic prehensile tails and signature hair, which is invariably wild and goat black (and which unlike Chikyuu-jin hair does not grow past a certain genetically determined length). The Saiya-jin exodus from Saiya-sei has long since passed into the realm of myth, but most accounts suggest the destruction was caused by a single "Legendary Super Saiya-jin," who briefly gained power enough to rival Frieza and shattered the planet like an eggshell in a suicidal supernova of uncontrolled energy. Only a small number of Saiya-jin survived, arriving on Vegeta-sei in a rag-tag fleet of ships seeking sanctuary. At first the Tsufuru-jin were welcoming of these bestial exiles, but as the Saiya-jin multiplied the more technologically advanced Tsufuru-jin began to see this horde of fast-breeding savages as a manace. Legislation became increasingly punitive towards the Saiya-jin refugee population, until eventually they were forced into slave labour, their prodigious physical strength held at bay by the deadly weapons of their native masters.
A revolt occured - led by a cruelly intelligent Saiya-jin named Vegeta, and at first it enjoyed a degree of success. But soon the superior numbers and firepower of the Tsufuru-jin began to turn the tide. It was then that something occured on Vegeta-sei that only occured every hundred years (and one would be foolish to think Vegeta ignorant of this - surely he had been waiting for this very moment) - a full moon - revealing by far the most extreme of the Saiya-jin digressions from the baseline humanoid template. When subjected to a certain frequency of green-spectrum radiation (known by the Saiya-jin as "Bruits Waves" and usually only accessible through the gravitational lensing of solar radiation by a massive spherical object such as a moon) a gland in the Saiya-jin's tail releases a substance that triggers an astounding transformation. In seconds, the Saiya-jin transforms into an Oozaru - a massive bestial ape, their already prodigious powers amplified tenfold and their minds overcome by a senseless bloodlust (with the exception of the Saiya-jin elites, who are trained from childhood to master the Great Ape form, a transformed Saiya-jin is almost mindless). Suddenly faced with half a billion giant monsters breathing atomic fury, the Tsufuru-jin simply gave up. A few determined scientists and religious fanatics fled the planet on the few starships the Tsufuru-jin had ever cared to build, but the vast majority of the population simply accepted the extinction the Saiya-jin dealt them. In one night the Saiya-jin had killed three hundred billion, leaving only the Tsufuru-jin God as mute observer to the changes sweeping his world. The planet was theirs - after returning to their normal forms, the Saiya-jin hailed Vegeta as their new leader, re-naming the world that had been called Tsufuru-sei in his honour. The Saiya-jin had no use for the technology the Tsufuru-jin left behind - or what little of it had survived their frenzy of destruction - and so it was that in the wake of their revolt they lapsed into near-barbarism, losing even the capability of space flight. Then came the Tsiru-jin - and the Saiya-jin, for the first time in their short, brutal history, learned a word for fear. The word was "Frieza".
The Tsiru-jin are by far the least populous race in the cosmos, to the point where only a single family is known to exist in the Milky Way. But those three Tsiru-jin - a father and two sons - have a power so great that they have almost single-handedly carved out the greatest empire the galaxy has ever known. A loose confederacy of client-races, the Tsiru-jin empire operates more like a real estate letting agency than a political organism. First, surveyors are sent out to evaluate planets - worlds with particularly powerful or prosperous occupants are first extended the offer of membership. Client-races pay tribute and contribute troops to the vast Tsiru-jin military machine; in return they receive unlimited access to the technological achievements of other client-races and may bid on worlds conquered by the Tsiru-jin. Generally planets with weaker inhabitants face a grimmer fate - such planets are either depopulated and auctioned off for colonisation by a compatible client-race, or blasted to slag and its raw materials sold to bolster the Tsiru-jin coffers. The Tsiru-jin named Cold officially holds the title of "king," but it is his youngest son, Frieza, whose individual might is freakishly high even for Tsiru-jin, who is the true power in the cosmos. This is reflected in the name of the Tsiru-jin capital world, Frieza-sei - the name is a movable feast, simply referring to Frieza's current favoured residence. When the young emperor becomes bored of a planet, it is sold or slagged and his retinue moved to a more interesting venue. His older brother, Cooler - forever cursed to live in his sibling's shadow - holds a minor share in the empire's assets, but prefers the solitude of space, and is invariably found at the head of the empire's planet-subjugating fleet.
Frieza saw the power and ferocity of the Saiya-jin and rather than destroy them chose to offer them client status with certain additional strings attached. The entire Saiya-jin race became a shock force for the Tsiru-jin army, gifted advanced armour, weapons and spacecraft suitably simplified for operation and maintenance by the less technically-minded species under Frieza's yoke, and dispatched to conquer worlds in his name. The Saiya-jin, after recovering from their initial shock of encountering beings stronger than themselves, applied themselves to their newly subservient position with only a little resentment. Most races in this cosmos we call home practice eugenics with a fervour that approaches spirituality, but the Saiya-jin have elevated it to a cultural art-form. Personal power determines everything from the resolution of legal disputes to the composition of the ruling classes - the carefully shepherded genes of the royal bloodline, each puissant heir named Vegeta in honour of his forebear, are some of the strongest in the galaxy outside the cosmic abberrations that comprise Frieza's super-elite corps and personal aides. The strong crush the weak. The lower castes are winnowed like corn, every child born tested on birth to determine its suitability to inherit the promised land Vegeta bequeathed the Saiya-jin peoples. Those with a power level deemed unfitting of the Saiya-jin name are sent away like Supermen in disgrace, newborn infants plummeting through space in pods that ignore the laws of time and reality; disposable spaceships our greatest scientists would kill to examine for just five minutes. Not for the Saiya-jin the wasteful path of infanticide; no, these genetic cast-offs are put to work. For under a full moon even the weakest mewling infant the Saiya-jin race has produced outmatches the nuclear arsenal of the greatest so-called powers on our mudball world. Let that sink in. These pitiful, spurned creatures are given one last legacy by their parents - an implant filling their brains with a single murderous desire; to wipe clean that unfortunate world they entered like a falling star. When the Saiya-jin ships arrive, they find a ball of slag metal and other saleable heavy elements, its surface long frozen to ice by the vast mushroom clouds that blotted out the sun. And somewhere, the skeleton of a child, glowing ivory in the searchlights; the last solid thing in a world blasted to dust.
Evolution. These days the lines between acquired and inheritable characteristics are being blurred - "epigenetics," the study of how the expression of inherited genetics can be modified by a primogenitor's lifestyle, has become a respectable field in the scientific community. What little of Saiya-jin science is not devoted to the art of geocide and planetary resource reclamation knows nothing else. As far as the Saiya-jin are concerned, Lamarck rules supreme. In a bizarre twist on the ancient Hebrew proverb, the child of a Saiya-jin youth is less than a the child of a Saiya-jin matured in years and power. The children surpass their fathers - this is everyday fact amongst Saiya-jin. Age itself holds little sway over them compared to the average species derived from the original intergalactic Cro-Magnons; even the lower orders enjoy a prime extending well into their eighties, with the Saiya-jin elite - the forementioned royal thoroughbreds - possessing a strength that endures for over a century. During this time, a Saiya-jin will likely endure several near-death experiences, either through combat as part of the Tsiru-jin army, or simply as in the course of Saiya-jin social life. Each time they recover, they become stronger, faster, more powerful than they were before, with seemingly no upper limit. For this purpose Frieza watches the Saiya-jin, that he might have some excuse to raise his finger and blow them all to ash. Does the combined power of the Saiya-jin race transformed into their Oozaru forms yet exceed that of his elite, the Ginyu Tokusentai, together with his brother's Armoured Squadron the galaxy's deadliest fighting force? How much of his own unimaginable might would he have to unlock to obliterate these impossible creatures? For now, he tolerates them. Each year, he makes the journey to Vegeta-sei, sets down his personal mothership upon the red soil like a rotting pumpkin. He will walk into the throneroom of the Saiya-jin and watch as their King, his immeasurable pride blasted to dust, rises from his seat to make way for the diminutive Tsiru-jin. How much hesitation there? Let only King Vegeta pause one moment as he momentarily yields his throne to this monster, this alien! King Vegeta can shatter worlds with a flick of his cape. But let him show the slightest spark of resentment, of uncrushed spirit, as he bows before the child-emperor of this universe, and his whole race is doomed.
Even Frieza fears. In a universe as terrifying as the one we inhabit, even the most insurmountable superiority cannot be taken for granted. Every whisper, every rumour, every legend - each "Legendary Super Saiya-jin" or “Super Namek-jin” - must be taken with grim seriousness. Frieza is a child - his race's lifespan is well in excess of a thousand years. Yet still his every waking thought is screaming terror - of death, of the shadow of someone more powerful than himself. To die, to become subject to that antique, creaking hierarchy of oni and death gods and divine judges - at his tender age Frieza already has the blood of trillions on his vacuum-proof hands. What he desires - more than anything else in the whole universe - is what all the science of the Tsiru-jin empire, the plundered knowledge of a thousand worlds, cannot give him; immortality. He knows the stories of Namek, of course, but its location is lost in mythic fog, and in any case is supposed to be uninhabitable now.
He cannot know that one lonely survivor survived the great changes of those who chose to stay behind and has since been personally repopulating the whole planet, his descendents beginning the painfully slow task of recultivating the precious Ajissa trees which will render the planet’s atmosphere once again fit for Namek life. That survivor alone maintains with his ancient soul the last set of dragonballs known to the Namek race - the spheres that call Porunga, the dragon at the heart of Namek-sei itself. But he and his progeny dare not use them. You see, each time a wish is made on the dragonballs, an exchange is made; the positive life energy that accomplishes the wish - creates gold, imbues immortality, grants great power, even lays waste to the wisher’s enemies - is exchanged for the negative energy of the wish itself, the dark energy of longing and need. The avarice of a wish for wealth, the fear of a wish for long life, the jealousy and hatred of a wish for power… it enters the dragonballs and worms its way to the heart of the biosphere itself, slowly poisoning it. To try and use the Namekian dragonballs to wish for the restoration of the planet would accomplish nothing but to destroy it. The negative energy dissipates, eventually, if there’s still enough healthy life to cleanse it. It takes about a century per wish - hence the maths behind scattering seven dragonballs across a normal-sized world. At least, until some enterprising individual finds out that the dragonballs emit a constant pulse of electromagnetic radiation; the reflection of the heartbeat of the dragon itself. The pulse allows the dragonballs to detect the presence of its fellows - but also means a suitably sensitive radar attuned to its specific frequency can detect the dragonballs across an entire planet. You may recognise that this makes the task of gathering them up quite a lot easier. Quite a lot faster, too. Most dragonballs include a final fail-safe - each wish turns them to stone for a set length of time; usually about a year, during which time the dragon cannot be summoned. And a good thing too - if this last line of defence is breached (say, by some too-clever-for-his-own-good Namekian loading a set up with three wishes then splitting it so each wish only incurs a time-out of four months), the evil energy can build up further to the point where the dragon itself is irretrievably corrupted. To summon a dragon which has become a ‘shadow dragon’ from an endless trickle of avarice, hatred and guilt is nothing less than civilisational suicide - do you remember the ‘voids’, the missing stars and galaxies, the cosmological Boojum? They fed the spirits of their worlds a diet of pain and fear and sickness and still expected them to do their bidding. Bang. Fermi’s Paradox finds its resolution.
Don’t feel too bad - that could be our fate too, if the Red Ribbon Army or the Reich Pilaf or one of the other cheap little thugdoms the World Government fears to fight finds out about the dragonballs here on Chikyuu-sei. I rather doubt it, though. Why do I say that? Well, do you remember the first fact I told you? Chikyuu-sei is one of a number of planets throughout the cosmos with a uniquely short lunar cycle. If we’ve fallen beneath Frieza’s notice, don’t think we’ve escaped the attention of the Saiya-jin. One day soon, I fear, a child from another world will fall screaming out of the sky and that’ll be an end to it.
How do I know all this? My dear, that’s my job. My credentials? I have passed through the veil between death and life. I have spoken with the judge of the living and the dead and defied the Kais and seen the cosmos illuminated in a sphere of glass. I who am sister to the immortal Turtle Hermit and have advised the rulers of the Earth for 500 years. I am the Witch of the Wilderness. I am Uranai Baba.
Wednesday 6 June 2012
Thursday 31 May 2012
JoJo's Bizarre Adventure - Stand ideas
Having recently come across Part 8 of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure I felt inspired to post up some of my eclectic Stand ideas. For those unfamiliar with the series, 'Stands' have been the central conceit of the story since Part III (replacing the Ripple, the vampire-busting martial arts in Part II). A Stand is a spiritual guardian - possibly the physical manifestation of the user's soul - that 'stands' by you and protects you from harm. Early on Stands look the form of muscular humanoid warriors, but this quickly diversified into a much wider variety of possible forms, though they usually appear vaguely robotic or armoured. Most of the Stands in Part 3 were named after Tarot cards and Egyptian gods, inkeeping with the locale, but when the deck and pantheon ran out Araki turned to band and song names, which (apart from a brief flirtation with fashion labels in Part 5) has remained the naming convention ever since. General rules - a Stand is only visible to other Stand users (there are exceptions - Strength, the Stand of orangutan Forever, takes the form of a massive freighter; originally a small rowing boat imbued with the 'strength' of the Stand). The abilities of Stands started simple (fan favourite Abdul's Stand, Magician's Red, can throw fire and not a lot else) but became increasingly esoteric until it started to take entire forum threads to explain how a Stand worked. Anyway, my contributions, all of which are hopefully original name-wise and fairly original concept wise. A couple of similar ones, having thought these up partway through reading the JoJo saga - Weapon of Choice vaguely resembles Part 6's Jumpin' Jack Flash, and Back In The U.S.S.R. has a similar feel to Joy Division from the light novel (though rather more versatile). Still, if Araki can recycle Stone Free into O! Lonesome Me and Bast into the Boom Boom family's stand, I think I'm fairly safe. The key when creating an authentic-feeling JoJo Stand is to choose a power that is simultaneously both ridiculously specific yet utterly broken; it should be vaguely, tangentially connected to the name but not obvious (e.g. below - Bad Luck isn't the Stand that makes people die of accidents; that's Pumped Up Kicks, because it makes you have to run away from the user - Bad Luck is the one that teleports when you're not looking at it because it's based on the album 'Somewhere Between Heaven and Hell' by 'Social Distortion'). I think my least convincing ones are the most literal - Beggar's Banquet, I'm With Stupid, Let It Bleed, etc. My personal favourites are probably Abbey Road, From Then To You, Rolled Gold, St Anger and Starless.
10 CC - Victims suffer 'flat affect' and become incapable of visceral responses, even to their own injury or impending death. User can afflict themselves with it (for example, to numb pain).
30 Seconds To Mars - Makes whatever portion of a solid, inanimate object is touched fly away faster than light.
Abbey Road - Turns time into space, attacks from outside victim's lifespan.
A strong, short-ranged stand. Abbey Road appears as a large, menacing Praying Mantis with an eyeless face between the eyestalks and human legs. When Abbey Road is activated, people caught in its area of effect (a large marketplace) perceive time stopping around them. Whenever they move, reality fast-forwards or rewinds around them. If they move too far any direction their body turns into dust and blows away (though they can reform it by withdrawing). The area (in actuality an off-centre sphere) in which they are "alive" is the spatial representation of their lifespan. Nothing they do, including throwing objects or attacking with their own Stand can affect the world outside this area. The user can move freely within Abbey Road's area of effect and can attack his victims from outside their lifespan, usually by throwing objects or darting in for hit-and-run attacks with the Stand itself, which has excellent speed. Its weakness is that the effect doesn't include light or sound, which the user needs to perceive his victims.
Another Brick In The Wall - Can create false memories which alter the victim's personality.
One of several memory stands I've thought up - Another Brick In The Wall is particularly dangerous as it lets you create custom memories at will (whereas Metro Station at best lets the user 'guide' the victim by suggesting possible options for confabulation, and Royksopp requires you to permanently destroy the thing you want others to forget about. ABITW allows you to render your opponents helpless (by implanting traumatic memories) or turn them against their allies - although you can't delete memories, even the ones you've created before, and hence can't erase comradely moments, you can retroactively sour the relationship by implanting more recent off-key moments, or even make the victim's comrades look like the memory-altering bad guys by implanting memories of them abducting and brainwashing him with false memories!
Armor for Sleep - Places victims into their own 'heaven' before killing them at their most complacent.
I imagine this as working something like Judgement meets The Man In The Mirror - you're not aware when you've entered the 'heaven'.
Back In The U.S.S.R. - Can 'nullify' the distance between two points or swap two people's locations.
Bad Luck - Stand can move instantaneously when not looked at directly, can break up its body and reconstruct it elsewhere.
Teleportation is somewhat unique - their head breaks up into lots of little heads, their arms into lots of little arms, etc. that fly to their target and reintegrate.
Beggar's Banquet - Creates illusions that cause the victim to neglect food and water.
Bullet With Butterfly Wings - Slows down objects in direct proportion to their speed, but they retain their kinetic energy.
E.g. a truck would be slowed to walking speed but impart the same impact on contact, flipping you up and over the vehicle. A bullet would be nearly stationary but if touched a bullet hole would appear directly in front of it before the bullet itself falls to the ground (having used up its kinetic energy).
Chinese Democracy - No action can be taken in its area of effect unless everyone (including the user) agrees.
Creed - Can turn flesh into the consistency of soft clay and keeps the user alive even if torn apart.
Enter Shikari - Victim's life replays and the past self's emotional state corresponds to their tangibility - at their lowest ebb ES kills them.
Appears as a golden humanoid with a long curving beak and no eyes. Its arms are boat-like crab claws which it uses to impale enemies at their weakest moment. Red and gold tangled tendrils connect the user to Enter Shikari at the shoulders.
Falco - Can create earthquakes.
'Rock me, Amadeus'. Surprisingly there does not appear to be a canon Stand with this power!
Follow The Leader - Creates unbreakable 'beams' of arbitrary length connecting any three living things.
For Your Entertainment - Merges the present and the future; objects and people from the different times destructively interact.
Makes the present co-exist with another time period, between one hour and one day into the future. The two realities destructively interact - items and people who exist in both time periods are drawn to each other as if by a powerful gravitational force, and when they collide they crumble like brittle stone. The user is sealed away within a protective sphere during this period which is the true form of the Stand.
From Then To You - Transfuses any quality from victim to user.
All My Love - Inject lethal venom into previous victims to make transfer permanent.
Best Hits - Copies powers of nearby Stands.
The user, Blondie, is a very beautiful young man with shoulder-length curly blond hair, who dresses in a fur coat and a Russian ushanka. The Stand From Then To You has three modes - the first looks like a mosquito-sized humanoid with a skull for a face and a tail resembling a hypodermic needle. It can drain any 'quality' from a living target, and inject it into the user, granting them that quality (up to 'peak human' level) for a full 24 hours or until they lose consciousness. The Stand is rather slow and weak, and relies on the element of surprise. The Stand can then assume its secondary mode 'All My Love'. In this form it reconfigures into a slightly larger form, resembling a normal-sized skull with a stinger - its sting is painful and incapacitating, but not lethal unless the target has already been the victim of 'From Then To You'. In this case 'All My Love' melts their body down into a sticky goo and makes the previous transfer/s permanent (Blondie has been around since the 1920s, but his Stand allows him to drain 'health' from others and so rejuvenate himself). 'All My Love' is incredibly fast and agile - likely as fast as Tower of Grey. If cornered, Blondie will use the final form of his Stand, 'Best Hits' - the Stand resembles its 'From Then To You' form, but is human-sized (think Hildegarn from Dragonball Z Movie 13). In this form its striking distance is that of a short-ranged Stand, but can copy the Stand powers of all nearby Stands. 'Best Hits' has a certain amount of personality, but isn't capable of telling his user what powers he possesses. Accordingly, Blondie usually likes to pair up with an expendable partner who he uses to find out about his opponents' Stands.
Goat's Head Soup - Touch induces crippling phobias of whatever the user wants.
Handbags & Gladrags - Offers victims seemingly useful items/services at ever-higher (and eventually fatal) prices.
Helldorado - Lets user "cut" actions from reality like a film director ("Director's Cut"...).
Basically a weaker, more flexible King Crimson.
Her Bright Skies - Creates a 'lens' of of air that focuses the light. Can be used to concentrate sunlight from a large region into a single point, creating a laser. Her Bright Skies cannot create light and needs a sufficiently large light source to use its ability.
Note: as a Stand that uses light, Her Bright Skies could potentially beat Abbey Road by forming the lens inside the user's lifespan and frying them with laser beams. It's a more streamlined version of The Sun, in the same that The Man In The Mirror is a more streamlined Hanged Man.
I'm With Stupid - User is supernaturally persuasive and whatever they say sounds like a great idea as long as they are present.
In The Army Now - Victim unravels: the unravelled parts can be reconstituted and controlled by the user.
Jars of Clay - Can 'stack' humans and objects inside each other like Matryoshka dolls.
Korn - Controls intestinal flora and grows it into a puppet that eventually controls the victim from the inside.
Le Tigre - Victims find a fuel indicator on their body - unless 'refuelled' by being in the user's presence it will deplete until death.
Arguably a more powerful form of Toy Soldiers, although the indicator also serves to point out the user, whereas Toy Soldiers only tells you the user is in range. If the victim's alone Toy Soldiers is also vastly more dangerous (no-one will wind them up, where with Le Tigre the user refuels her victims whether she wants to or not). Based on the lyrics to 'Deceptacon'.
Let It Bleed - Can use spilt blood as a medium to teleport, wields anti-coagulant blades.
Life Is Peachy - People in its area of effect must 'always do the right thing' or their limbs will bud and deform.
Linkin Park - Anyone who makes eye contact with the user melts and can be combined with other living things ("Hybrid Theory").
Takes the form of a powerful armoured figure with ragged butterfly wings which floats over the user. It is reasonably strong and powerful (partially because victims cannot look at the user) but its main strength is the hybrid creatures it creates.
Lostprophets - Can sever parts of its victims' bodies without them feeling it and places them into games machines; if a player wins the game the body part is restored, however they must 'buy in' to the game with things they have 'stolen' from others. These items need not be present but are lost if the player fails. The player may continue to play until they run out of stolen items, at which point the machine disappears with the victim's body part; the victim then suffers any damage that would normally occur if the part were actually severed. A player who runs out of items may buy in one last time with their own life - 'stolen time'. Lostprophets' user is able to have Lostprophets sever part of his own body, transferring his consciousness to the severed part. His body can then be 'killed', allowing the user to fake his own death - the severed part will regenerate over time inside Lostprophets into a new body for the user.
Looks like a floating cabinet covered by a cloak with a squat head swathed in bandages; its 'hands' are floating triangles of metal. The machines it creates look like odd ripoffs of popular arcade games like Street Fighter; characters may have bizarre or missing moves to throw players off, but the game cannot be 'rigged'. Quite an involved Stand power but one that I think sounds sufficient Jojoesque - the power is inspired by the lyrics to 'Can't Catch Tomorrow' and 'Shinobi vs the Dragon Ninja'.
Major Tom - The victim is unable to make others hear, understand or eventually even notice them.
MakeDamnSure - Surrounding buildings break apart and reconstruct themselves around the victims, smothering them.
Mandolin Rain - Can instantly fill any completely sealed area with water that does not affect the user.
Maroon 5 - Can teleport itself and its user between any enclosed space and any adjoining enclosed space.
Mars Volta - Can reverse 'the contained' and 'the containing' so the former is outside the latter. The 'contained' cannot be living tissue - so it cannot turn you inside out, but can seal you in something you're holding (e.g. - you're lifting a coffin - Mars Volta means you are now inside the coffin), drown you in the glass of water you've just drunk, etc. If you have a pacemaker, fillings or other artificial body parts it can also invert them, which may lead to death (for example, your pacemaker is now a thin metal filament covering your body).
Metro Station - Suppresses memories - the victim confabulates new ones, á la Korsakoff's Syndrome.
Mötley Crüe - Can replace body parts (the user's or the victim's) with inanimate objects.
Has the power to swap body parts with nearby inanimate objects. Any replaced part functions exactly like the limb it replaces but is under the partial control of the user. The user can replace their own limbs with inanimate objects (for example, to avoid injury) - in which case the objects are completely under the user's control and can be used with almost telekinetic power (for example, replacing one's arm with a lampstand - the user can reshape the glass into sharp, shardlike "fingers"). Mötley Crüe looks like a humanoid stick insect with a grimacing tribal mask.
Alternate: Mötley Crüe must touch the victim or imbue an object with power so the first person to touch it is affected. Can replace someone's brain with an inanimate object to kill them. However, Mötley Crüe itself has little strength.
Motörhead - Invulnerable car apparition attacks victims when they cross a road after touching the user's keys.
The user, Dog Face Boy, is a stereotypical British punk rocker with a nose ring and a ripped Union Jack T-Shirt. The Stand Motörhead takes the form of a set of car keys - to affect a victim they must touch the keys. His favoured strategy is to drop the keys and wait for his victim to pick them up and return them to him. After they touch the keys they are under Motörhead's power. Every time they try to cross a road they will be attacked by a beaten-up Ford GT Convertible with a fanged mouth painted on the front. It's apparently invulnerable and will pursue the victim until they return to the original side of the road they came from. No-one else can see this car - not even other Stand users, because it isn't a Stand itself. The effect is to confine the victim to an area described by the nearest roads in all directions. Even trying to fly or burrow under the road will attract the ghost car, which can phase through earth or 'ramp' up to attack.
Mr. Rogers - Seals the victim in a shell in which they experience recursive visions of traumatic past events.
Not really the same as 'Civil War'. If you're seeing the past event you're already unconscious and trapped in Mr. Rogers' shell; the visions are first-person and feel just as real as the first time. It could be considered to be a more effective but less lethal version of Whitesnake. The Stand doesn't kill and the shell can't be broken to do harm to the victims - but neither does it dissipate unless the user is killed. Based on the KoЯn song of the same name, of course.
Napoleon XIV - Can rearrange air molecules to create invisible globes of poisonous gas.
Nickelback - Takes the form of six spaceship-like interceptors which orbit and protect the user.
Quite a boring Stand - better for a hero, I suppose. Its similarity to Aerosmith has been noted, though Nickelback is a much more passive Stand, with each interceptor having a different ability.
Nine Inch Nails - Induces agnosia in 'marked' victims towards sharp objects (e.g. nails, tacks, spikes, etc.).
Out Of Our Heads - Induces out-of-body experiences during which time user (or victim) is helpless.
A weak, long-ranged stand, Out Of Our Heads appears as a clown-like robot about two feet tall with clamps for hands. It can induce an Out Of Body Experience/Astral Projection in either the user or a target of their choice. While in spectral form, the person can travel up to Out Of Our Heads' range from their body and see Stands even if they would otherwise be unable to do so. However, their body is completely vulnerable. Out Of Our Heads must lock itself onto the person affected and cannot fight until it removes its clamps (at which point the projected spirit will return). Other people who Out Of Our Heads locks onto cannot use their Stands while in astral form. The Stand is best used to spy on opponents and immobilise others while you kill them (since the user can still move and act normally whilst Out Of Our Heads is locked onto a target). Note that Stand users cannot normally see astral projections unless their own Stands grant them some kind of supernatural perception.
Papa Roach - 'Eats away' at walls and floors and anything that touches them.
P.O.D. - Orbital stand deflects damage from the user to whoever it's currently over; user cannot move while it is away from them.
Pumped Up Kicks - Causes the nearest person from the user to be very likely to suffer a lethal accident with no range limit.
Resembles a green sphere with a leering, semi-mechanical face and a gun barrel instead of one eye - that side also has a small arm. It cannot defend the user and automatically 'targets' the nearest person while active. I envisage the user ('Foster Robert', a sullen, chain-smoking teenager in a cowboy hat) to be kept on a tight leash by the Big Bad since his Stand is so indiscriminate (perhaps by pairing him with the user of Revolver, whose Stand can protect against Pumped Up Kicks for a short time). If Foster unleashed Pumped Up Kicks in a metropolitan area, he could potentially depopulate it over time. Note: it's nowhere near so powerful as canon Stand Green Day (basically a biological WMD); it takes at least some time per victim to 'pump up' its effect to full lethality (unless they're actively trying to kill Foster), and can only affect one person at once. Its advantage is its unlimited range - but even then Bohemian Rhapsody is vastly more hax, as it affects everyone, everywhere, without giving such a strong idea where the user is (Pumped Up Kicks at full throttle would place the user at the centre of an area depopulated by freak accidents - if you want to kill the Stand user, just attack the guy next to you as if the victim is the closest to the user, that means the user is the closest person to the victim).
Rammstein - Takes the form of four indestructible metal plates about 6'' square which can be placed anywhere.
A suitably JoJo-ish subversion of expectations, I believe. You can materialise and dematerialise the plates at will (meaning if you have sufficient reflexes you can materialise them in front of an opposing Stand's fists), but can't materialise them inside living things or move them while materialised, so initially it seems they can't even be used offensively. However, they do have a lot of uses - holding doors shut, walking on them like 'stairs' to move through the air, creating a fake 'floor' before dematerialising it when your opponents are walking on it, tripping your opponents before pinning them down, etc. Also realised it can be used to convert explosives into shaped charges; since there are only four square plates you can't completely contain an explosive, but you can create a half-cube which shapes the explosion in one direction.
Alternate: Everything in its area of effect that falls with the same energy it would have if it fell its full height to sea level (so dropping a cup on the top floor of skyscraper is basically a shrapnel bomb - tripping over on an airliner results in you splattering all over the compartment). Based on 'Dalai Lama' (the song was named after the real-life Dalai Lama's fear of flying).
Revolver - Anything with a 1/6 probability or less will never occur within its area of effect.
Would work best paired with The Way It Is - Revolver's user doesn't automatically know the probability of events, only that it must be one in six or more to be nullified (the Stand means he cannot kill himself via Russian roulette). Looks like a slightly ramshackle scarecrow assembled from scrap metal - the face appears to be beaten out of a metal drum that has blown out at the back, surrounding its head with six 'leafs' of ragged metal.
Rolled Gold - Inverts the density of solids and gases in its area of effect (people turn into 'ghosts' inside solids).
A bit hard to visualise - basically when it activates the world in its area of effect turns inside-out and you're suddenly floating in the middle of a solid object. When you emerge ('inside' a nearby wall, foundation, etc.) the world is now a maze of narrow crawlspaces floating over a massive abyss (the ground, now an inverted sky). The user can, of course, just float through anything they want.
Royksopp - Whatever the Stand eats is erased from everyone's memory; only the user remembers it and can remind others.
Rubberbandman - Encases the user in a protective sphere of tendrils, which can be expanded to attack.
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band - Takes the form of a tank which can 'pour' itself through any obstacle.
The tank's centred on the user, so it can get through any gap the user can. The user can push parts of it through smaller gaps - for example, it can extrude the cannon barrel through a tiny crack in a wall to 'see' inside and can fire as if the barrel were not squashed. It also lends traction to the user's movements and confers mass/inertia as though it were resting on whatever surface it's resting on whatever the relative direction of gravity - so he can use it to walk up the side of a building. I note this would make it largely immune to Weapon of Choice; it could just keep on coming.
Seventh Heaven - Forms a tower with seven levels around the user with different 'rules' for survival known only to the user.
Dark Heaven - The user can change the tower's 'rules' at will but must reveal them to the victim.
Snot - User can turn recipes or instructions into what they represent (e.g. recipe into fish soup).
Easy to underestimate this Stand - but when you realise what happens when they use it on the schematics for a nuclear bomb, the floorplans for a skyscraper, etc., it suddenly seems a lot more broken.
St. Anger - User is turned invisible. A duplicate user is created, which bleeds 'monsters' if injured.
Starless - Anyone the Stand touches loses all of their senses, and is trapped repeating the same actions via pareidolia.
Based on what I surmise to be the original design for King Crimson - the ultimate revelation that it 'erases time', allowing the user knowledge of the future doesn't gel with the woman Diavolo's mentor found under the floorboards of his house, apparently with all her senses erased - unless that was the power of his mother's Stand. Basically, once Starless touches you, you lose consciousness for an unknown length of time as your body reacts to suddenly losing all access to the external world. When you recover your brain manufactures input that corresponds to what you were last doing, and puts you on an infinite loop; so if you last entered a bank, made a withdrawal and left, you'll keep doing that (though in reality the user is probably lying on the ground, moving their arms and legs and talking to themselves). Any attempt to break the routine or enter a new area confronts the victim with a black void which is their own lack of senses. The victim can still control their body (albeit they have no idea whether they are in the right place, whether they are talking to friends or the user, etc.) and can warn others if they work out what has happened to them.
Switchfoot - Solidifies ambient sound into physical objects like stairs or mazelike walls.
Taking Back Sunday - Progressively erases technology (temporarily); only victims remember it.
The user, Adam Carpathia, is a middle-aged bald Catholic priest who wears a cassock and a Roman collar. The Stand Taking Back Sunday looks like a man in an old-fashioned diving suit, albeit with spiked collars (similar to inverted cilices) on its arms, legs, and spikes running up its spine. Its hands are surrounded by spinning cart wheels, and behind the helmet is just a huge, cyclopean red eye. Its power is to erase any technology it punches, seemingly rewriting history as it does so (though the effect may just be to pull all Stand users within a certain area into a parallel world). It cannot delete any technology invented before the year 1500 or any mechanism necessary to human survival (e.g. mechanisms also found in the human body), and all effects end as soon as Carpathia cancels Taking Back Sunday or is rendered unconscious.
The Avalanches - Can induce any sufficiently complex mechanism to emit paranoia-causing radio waves.
The Birthday Massacre - Causes anyone, including the user, in its area of effect to split into two. The original and duplicate are seemingly identical and it is impossible to tell which is which; but the duplicate will die when TBM is deactivated.
Works primarily by 'game theory' - both the original and the duplicate will consider themselves to be the original (having continuity of consciousness and the same memories), and may even try to kill the other; both can control the original's Stand. If the duplicate wins, the user has defeated that person, because they can deactivate TBM at any time and kill the duplicate. The Stand's weakness is the user's duplicate, who can also control and deactivate TBM. However, both user and duplicate know that if the duplicate attacks the user, both die - by working with their copy they can ensure that at least one of them survives. Based on the lyrics to Happy Birthday ("I think my friend said 'two of them are sisters'"). Basically the Stand version of The Prestige.
The Presets - Anything said in its presence echoes and reverberates so it cannot be said and heard again; eventually the area is awash with white noise.
The Way It Is - Stand tells the user the exact probability of any event.
Turmion Kätilöt - Takes the form of a crawling bonfire which grows as it consumes victims. Not entirely under its user's control.
The band name ('Midwives of Destruction') suggested some sort of Stand that gives birth to a destructive force; however this seemed too predictable (and too much like Baby Face from Part 5) and instead I went with a theme following 'Verta ja Lihaa' ("Step into the bonfire/Soul is shouting and nails are scratching/Oh, how it hates blood and flesh").
Toy Soldiers - Victims grow a clockwork key from their back and 'wind down' if it is not turned by another person.
U2 - Creates murderous clones of victim every time they move (Nude Descending A Staircase style).
Makes clones of the victim bud off from them every time they move a set distance - these clones will follow and attempt to kill the original (note that if the victim is a Stand user the clones will not have Stands). The clones will claim to be the original and will try and gain the confidence of the victims' friends. The Stand itself looks like a shiny black robot with a golden ponytail and a single horn in the middle of its forehead.
Weapon of Choice - Centipede-like Stand which nullifies gravity in its area of effect.
Yesterday And Today - Forces victims to relive the same day, which gets progressively worse.
It occurs to me most of my Stand ideas work best as villains the heroes encounter. A few exceptions -
30 Seconds to Mars, Back In The U.S.S.R., Bad Luck, Bullet With Butterfly Wings, Creed, Follow The Leader, Her Bright Skies, Jars of Clay, Mötley Crüe, Napoleon XIV, Nickelback, Rammstein, Rubberbandman, Snot and Switchfoot are all suitably balanced to work as heroes' Stands. I had a dream where Enter Shikari was the protagonist's Stand, but I don't think it would be very entertaining - find out who the bad guy is, wait until ES replays the most angsty part of his backstory, then hit him while he's helpless (never mind that ES is basically Moody Blues Requiem, giving you an intimate insight into any enemy even if you don't attack). Most bad guys in JJBA or otherwise tend to have angsty pasts, which makes them vulnerable to ES; if they've had a moment of total despair or helplessness, replaying it renders them near-transparent and so fragile that a normal human could tear them in half like paper.
Best stands for major antagonists - Abbey Road, For Your Entertainment, Taking Back Sunday, Yesterday and Today. They have the characteristic time/reality warping of major villains and what seems to be flawless hax: Abbey Road is basically permanent timestop that allows you to throw stuff at your victims until they die; For Your Entertainment is potentially a world-destroying Stand; Taking Back Sunday pulls victims through alternate realities, progressively cutting off them off from allies and escape; Yesterday and Today is a more flexible Another One Bites The Dust.
10 CC - Victims suffer 'flat affect' and become incapable of visceral responses, even to their own injury or impending death. User can afflict themselves with it (for example, to numb pain).
30 Seconds To Mars - Makes whatever portion of a solid, inanimate object is touched fly away faster than light.
Abbey Road - Turns time into space, attacks from outside victim's lifespan.
A strong, short-ranged stand. Abbey Road appears as a large, menacing Praying Mantis with an eyeless face between the eyestalks and human legs. When Abbey Road is activated, people caught in its area of effect (a large marketplace) perceive time stopping around them. Whenever they move, reality fast-forwards or rewinds around them. If they move too far any direction their body turns into dust and blows away (though they can reform it by withdrawing). The area (in actuality an off-centre sphere) in which they are "alive" is the spatial representation of their lifespan. Nothing they do, including throwing objects or attacking with their own Stand can affect the world outside this area. The user can move freely within Abbey Road's area of effect and can attack his victims from outside their lifespan, usually by throwing objects or darting in for hit-and-run attacks with the Stand itself, which has excellent speed. Its weakness is that the effect doesn't include light or sound, which the user needs to perceive his victims.
Another Brick In The Wall - Can create false memories which alter the victim's personality.
One of several memory stands I've thought up - Another Brick In The Wall is particularly dangerous as it lets you create custom memories at will (whereas Metro Station at best lets the user 'guide' the victim by suggesting possible options for confabulation, and Royksopp requires you to permanently destroy the thing you want others to forget about. ABITW allows you to render your opponents helpless (by implanting traumatic memories) or turn them against their allies - although you can't delete memories, even the ones you've created before, and hence can't erase comradely moments, you can retroactively sour the relationship by implanting more recent off-key moments, or even make the victim's comrades look like the memory-altering bad guys by implanting memories of them abducting and brainwashing him with false memories!
Armor for Sleep - Places victims into their own 'heaven' before killing them at their most complacent.
I imagine this as working something like Judgement meets The Man In The Mirror - you're not aware when you've entered the 'heaven'.
Back In The U.S.S.R. - Can 'nullify' the distance between two points or swap two people's locations.
Bad Luck - Stand can move instantaneously when not looked at directly, can break up its body and reconstruct it elsewhere.
Teleportation is somewhat unique - their head breaks up into lots of little heads, their arms into lots of little arms, etc. that fly to their target and reintegrate.
Beggar's Banquet - Creates illusions that cause the victim to neglect food and water.
Bullet With Butterfly Wings - Slows down objects in direct proportion to their speed, but they retain their kinetic energy.
E.g. a truck would be slowed to walking speed but impart the same impact on contact, flipping you up and over the vehicle. A bullet would be nearly stationary but if touched a bullet hole would appear directly in front of it before the bullet itself falls to the ground (having used up its kinetic energy).
Chinese Democracy - No action can be taken in its area of effect unless everyone (including the user) agrees.
Creed - Can turn flesh into the consistency of soft clay and keeps the user alive even if torn apart.
Enter Shikari - Victim's life replays and the past self's emotional state corresponds to their tangibility - at their lowest ebb ES kills them.
Appears as a golden humanoid with a long curving beak and no eyes. Its arms are boat-like crab claws which it uses to impale enemies at their weakest moment. Red and gold tangled tendrils connect the user to Enter Shikari at the shoulders.
Falco - Can create earthquakes.
'Rock me, Amadeus'. Surprisingly there does not appear to be a canon Stand with this power!
Follow The Leader - Creates unbreakable 'beams' of arbitrary length connecting any three living things.
For Your Entertainment - Merges the present and the future; objects and people from the different times destructively interact.
Makes the present co-exist with another time period, between one hour and one day into the future. The two realities destructively interact - items and people who exist in both time periods are drawn to each other as if by a powerful gravitational force, and when they collide they crumble like brittle stone. The user is sealed away within a protective sphere during this period which is the true form of the Stand.
From Then To You - Transfuses any quality from victim to user.
All My Love - Inject lethal venom into previous victims to make transfer permanent.
Best Hits - Copies powers of nearby Stands.
The user, Blondie, is a very beautiful young man with shoulder-length curly blond hair, who dresses in a fur coat and a Russian ushanka. The Stand From Then To You has three modes - the first looks like a mosquito-sized humanoid with a skull for a face and a tail resembling a hypodermic needle. It can drain any 'quality' from a living target, and inject it into the user, granting them that quality (up to 'peak human' level) for a full 24 hours or until they lose consciousness. The Stand is rather slow and weak, and relies on the element of surprise. The Stand can then assume its secondary mode 'All My Love'. In this form it reconfigures into a slightly larger form, resembling a normal-sized skull with a stinger - its sting is painful and incapacitating, but not lethal unless the target has already been the victim of 'From Then To You'. In this case 'All My Love' melts their body down into a sticky goo and makes the previous transfer/s permanent (Blondie has been around since the 1920s, but his Stand allows him to drain 'health' from others and so rejuvenate himself). 'All My Love' is incredibly fast and agile - likely as fast as Tower of Grey. If cornered, Blondie will use the final form of his Stand, 'Best Hits' - the Stand resembles its 'From Then To You' form, but is human-sized (think Hildegarn from Dragonball Z Movie 13). In this form its striking distance is that of a short-ranged Stand, but can copy the Stand powers of all nearby Stands. 'Best Hits' has a certain amount of personality, but isn't capable of telling his user what powers he possesses. Accordingly, Blondie usually likes to pair up with an expendable partner who he uses to find out about his opponents' Stands.
Goat's Head Soup - Touch induces crippling phobias of whatever the user wants.
Handbags & Gladrags - Offers victims seemingly useful items/services at ever-higher (and eventually fatal) prices.
Helldorado - Lets user "cut" actions from reality like a film director ("Director's Cut"...).
Basically a weaker, more flexible King Crimson.
Her Bright Skies - Creates a 'lens' of of air that focuses the light. Can be used to concentrate sunlight from a large region into a single point, creating a laser. Her Bright Skies cannot create light and needs a sufficiently large light source to use its ability.
Note: as a Stand that uses light, Her Bright Skies could potentially beat Abbey Road by forming the lens inside the user's lifespan and frying them with laser beams. It's a more streamlined version of The Sun, in the same that The Man In The Mirror is a more streamlined Hanged Man.
I'm With Stupid - User is supernaturally persuasive and whatever they say sounds like a great idea as long as they are present.
In The Army Now - Victim unravels: the unravelled parts can be reconstituted and controlled by the user.
Jars of Clay - Can 'stack' humans and objects inside each other like Matryoshka dolls.
Korn - Controls intestinal flora and grows it into a puppet that eventually controls the victim from the inside.
Le Tigre - Victims find a fuel indicator on their body - unless 'refuelled' by being in the user's presence it will deplete until death.
Arguably a more powerful form of Toy Soldiers, although the indicator also serves to point out the user, whereas Toy Soldiers only tells you the user is in range. If the victim's alone Toy Soldiers is also vastly more dangerous (no-one will wind them up, where with Le Tigre the user refuels her victims whether she wants to or not). Based on the lyrics to 'Deceptacon'.
Let It Bleed - Can use spilt blood as a medium to teleport, wields anti-coagulant blades.
Life Is Peachy - People in its area of effect must 'always do the right thing' or their limbs will bud and deform.
Linkin Park - Anyone who makes eye contact with the user melts and can be combined with other living things ("Hybrid Theory").
Takes the form of a powerful armoured figure with ragged butterfly wings which floats over the user. It is reasonably strong and powerful (partially because victims cannot look at the user) but its main strength is the hybrid creatures it creates.
Lostprophets - Can sever parts of its victims' bodies without them feeling it and places them into games machines; if a player wins the game the body part is restored, however they must 'buy in' to the game with things they have 'stolen' from others. These items need not be present but are lost if the player fails. The player may continue to play until they run out of stolen items, at which point the machine disappears with the victim's body part; the victim then suffers any damage that would normally occur if the part were actually severed. A player who runs out of items may buy in one last time with their own life - 'stolen time'. Lostprophets' user is able to have Lostprophets sever part of his own body, transferring his consciousness to the severed part. His body can then be 'killed', allowing the user to fake his own death - the severed part will regenerate over time inside Lostprophets into a new body for the user.
Looks like a floating cabinet covered by a cloak with a squat head swathed in bandages; its 'hands' are floating triangles of metal. The machines it creates look like odd ripoffs of popular arcade games like Street Fighter; characters may have bizarre or missing moves to throw players off, but the game cannot be 'rigged'. Quite an involved Stand power but one that I think sounds sufficient Jojoesque - the power is inspired by the lyrics to 'Can't Catch Tomorrow' and 'Shinobi vs the Dragon Ninja'.
Major Tom - The victim is unable to make others hear, understand or eventually even notice them.
MakeDamnSure - Surrounding buildings break apart and reconstruct themselves around the victims, smothering them.
Mandolin Rain - Can instantly fill any completely sealed area with water that does not affect the user.
Maroon 5 - Can teleport itself and its user between any enclosed space and any adjoining enclosed space.
Mars Volta - Can reverse 'the contained' and 'the containing' so the former is outside the latter. The 'contained' cannot be living tissue - so it cannot turn you inside out, but can seal you in something you're holding (e.g. - you're lifting a coffin - Mars Volta means you are now inside the coffin), drown you in the glass of water you've just drunk, etc. If you have a pacemaker, fillings or other artificial body parts it can also invert them, which may lead to death (for example, your pacemaker is now a thin metal filament covering your body).
Metro Station - Suppresses memories - the victim confabulates new ones, á la Korsakoff's Syndrome.
Mötley Crüe - Can replace body parts (the user's or the victim's) with inanimate objects.
Has the power to swap body parts with nearby inanimate objects. Any replaced part functions exactly like the limb it replaces but is under the partial control of the user. The user can replace their own limbs with inanimate objects (for example, to avoid injury) - in which case the objects are completely under the user's control and can be used with almost telekinetic power (for example, replacing one's arm with a lampstand - the user can reshape the glass into sharp, shardlike "fingers"). Mötley Crüe looks like a humanoid stick insect with a grimacing tribal mask.
Alternate: Mötley Crüe must touch the victim or imbue an object with power so the first person to touch it is affected. Can replace someone's brain with an inanimate object to kill them. However, Mötley Crüe itself has little strength.
Motörhead - Invulnerable car apparition attacks victims when they cross a road after touching the user's keys.
The user, Dog Face Boy, is a stereotypical British punk rocker with a nose ring and a ripped Union Jack T-Shirt. The Stand Motörhead takes the form of a set of car keys - to affect a victim they must touch the keys. His favoured strategy is to drop the keys and wait for his victim to pick them up and return them to him. After they touch the keys they are under Motörhead's power. Every time they try to cross a road they will be attacked by a beaten-up Ford GT Convertible with a fanged mouth painted on the front. It's apparently invulnerable and will pursue the victim until they return to the original side of the road they came from. No-one else can see this car - not even other Stand users, because it isn't a Stand itself. The effect is to confine the victim to an area described by the nearest roads in all directions. Even trying to fly or burrow under the road will attract the ghost car, which can phase through earth or 'ramp' up to attack.
Mr. Rogers - Seals the victim in a shell in which they experience recursive visions of traumatic past events.
Not really the same as 'Civil War'. If you're seeing the past event you're already unconscious and trapped in Mr. Rogers' shell; the visions are first-person and feel just as real as the first time. It could be considered to be a more effective but less lethal version of Whitesnake. The Stand doesn't kill and the shell can't be broken to do harm to the victims - but neither does it dissipate unless the user is killed. Based on the KoЯn song of the same name, of course.
Napoleon XIV - Can rearrange air molecules to create invisible globes of poisonous gas.
Nickelback - Takes the form of six spaceship-like interceptors which orbit and protect the user.
Quite a boring Stand - better for a hero, I suppose. Its similarity to Aerosmith has been noted, though Nickelback is a much more passive Stand, with each interceptor having a different ability.
Nine Inch Nails - Induces agnosia in 'marked' victims towards sharp objects (e.g. nails, tacks, spikes, etc.).
Out Of Our Heads - Induces out-of-body experiences during which time user (or victim) is helpless.
A weak, long-ranged stand, Out Of Our Heads appears as a clown-like robot about two feet tall with clamps for hands. It can induce an Out Of Body Experience/Astral Projection in either the user or a target of their choice. While in spectral form, the person can travel up to Out Of Our Heads' range from their body and see Stands even if they would otherwise be unable to do so. However, their body is completely vulnerable. Out Of Our Heads must lock itself onto the person affected and cannot fight until it removes its clamps (at which point the projected spirit will return). Other people who Out Of Our Heads locks onto cannot use their Stands while in astral form. The Stand is best used to spy on opponents and immobilise others while you kill them (since the user can still move and act normally whilst Out Of Our Heads is locked onto a target). Note that Stand users cannot normally see astral projections unless their own Stands grant them some kind of supernatural perception.
Papa Roach - 'Eats away' at walls and floors and anything that touches them.
P.O.D. - Orbital stand deflects damage from the user to whoever it's currently over; user cannot move while it is away from them.
Pumped Up Kicks - Causes the nearest person from the user to be very likely to suffer a lethal accident with no range limit.
Resembles a green sphere with a leering, semi-mechanical face and a gun barrel instead of one eye - that side also has a small arm. It cannot defend the user and automatically 'targets' the nearest person while active. I envisage the user ('Foster Robert', a sullen, chain-smoking teenager in a cowboy hat) to be kept on a tight leash by the Big Bad since his Stand is so indiscriminate (perhaps by pairing him with the user of Revolver, whose Stand can protect against Pumped Up Kicks for a short time). If Foster unleashed Pumped Up Kicks in a metropolitan area, he could potentially depopulate it over time. Note: it's nowhere near so powerful as canon Stand Green Day (basically a biological WMD); it takes at least some time per victim to 'pump up' its effect to full lethality (unless they're actively trying to kill Foster), and can only affect one person at once. Its advantage is its unlimited range - but even then Bohemian Rhapsody is vastly more hax, as it affects everyone, everywhere, without giving such a strong idea where the user is (Pumped Up Kicks at full throttle would place the user at the centre of an area depopulated by freak accidents - if you want to kill the Stand user, just attack the guy next to you as if the victim is the closest to the user, that means the user is the closest person to the victim).
Rammstein - Takes the form of four indestructible metal plates about 6'' square which can be placed anywhere.
A suitably JoJo-ish subversion of expectations, I believe. You can materialise and dematerialise the plates at will (meaning if you have sufficient reflexes you can materialise them in front of an opposing Stand's fists), but can't materialise them inside living things or move them while materialised, so initially it seems they can't even be used offensively. However, they do have a lot of uses - holding doors shut, walking on them like 'stairs' to move through the air, creating a fake 'floor' before dematerialising it when your opponents are walking on it, tripping your opponents before pinning them down, etc. Also realised it can be used to convert explosives into shaped charges; since there are only four square plates you can't completely contain an explosive, but you can create a half-cube which shapes the explosion in one direction.
Alternate: Everything in its area of effect that falls with the same energy it would have if it fell its full height to sea level (so dropping a cup on the top floor of skyscraper is basically a shrapnel bomb - tripping over on an airliner results in you splattering all over the compartment). Based on 'Dalai Lama' (the song was named after the real-life Dalai Lama's fear of flying).
Revolver - Anything with a 1/6 probability or less will never occur within its area of effect.
Would work best paired with The Way It Is - Revolver's user doesn't automatically know the probability of events, only that it must be one in six or more to be nullified (the Stand means he cannot kill himself via Russian roulette). Looks like a slightly ramshackle scarecrow assembled from scrap metal - the face appears to be beaten out of a metal drum that has blown out at the back, surrounding its head with six 'leafs' of ragged metal.
Rolled Gold - Inverts the density of solids and gases in its area of effect (people turn into 'ghosts' inside solids).
A bit hard to visualise - basically when it activates the world in its area of effect turns inside-out and you're suddenly floating in the middle of a solid object. When you emerge ('inside' a nearby wall, foundation, etc.) the world is now a maze of narrow crawlspaces floating over a massive abyss (the ground, now an inverted sky). The user can, of course, just float through anything they want.
Royksopp - Whatever the Stand eats is erased from everyone's memory; only the user remembers it and can remind others.
Rubberbandman - Encases the user in a protective sphere of tendrils, which can be expanded to attack.
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band - Takes the form of a tank which can 'pour' itself through any obstacle.
The tank's centred on the user, so it can get through any gap the user can. The user can push parts of it through smaller gaps - for example, it can extrude the cannon barrel through a tiny crack in a wall to 'see' inside and can fire as if the barrel were not squashed. It also lends traction to the user's movements and confers mass/inertia as though it were resting on whatever surface it's resting on whatever the relative direction of gravity - so he can use it to walk up the side of a building. I note this would make it largely immune to Weapon of Choice; it could just keep on coming.
Seventh Heaven - Forms a tower with seven levels around the user with different 'rules' for survival known only to the user.
Dark Heaven - The user can change the tower's 'rules' at will but must reveal them to the victim.
Snot - User can turn recipes or instructions into what they represent (e.g. recipe into fish soup).
Easy to underestimate this Stand - but when you realise what happens when they use it on the schematics for a nuclear bomb, the floorplans for a skyscraper, etc., it suddenly seems a lot more broken.
St. Anger - User is turned invisible. A duplicate user is created, which bleeds 'monsters' if injured.
Starless - Anyone the Stand touches loses all of their senses, and is trapped repeating the same actions via pareidolia.
Based on what I surmise to be the original design for King Crimson - the ultimate revelation that it 'erases time', allowing the user knowledge of the future doesn't gel with the woman Diavolo's mentor found under the floorboards of his house, apparently with all her senses erased - unless that was the power of his mother's Stand. Basically, once Starless touches you, you lose consciousness for an unknown length of time as your body reacts to suddenly losing all access to the external world. When you recover your brain manufactures input that corresponds to what you were last doing, and puts you on an infinite loop; so if you last entered a bank, made a withdrawal and left, you'll keep doing that (though in reality the user is probably lying on the ground, moving their arms and legs and talking to themselves). Any attempt to break the routine or enter a new area confronts the victim with a black void which is their own lack of senses. The victim can still control their body (albeit they have no idea whether they are in the right place, whether they are talking to friends or the user, etc.) and can warn others if they work out what has happened to them.
Switchfoot - Solidifies ambient sound into physical objects like stairs or mazelike walls.
Taking Back Sunday - Progressively erases technology (temporarily); only victims remember it.
The user, Adam Carpathia, is a middle-aged bald Catholic priest who wears a cassock and a Roman collar. The Stand Taking Back Sunday looks like a man in an old-fashioned diving suit, albeit with spiked collars (similar to inverted cilices) on its arms, legs, and spikes running up its spine. Its hands are surrounded by spinning cart wheels, and behind the helmet is just a huge, cyclopean red eye. Its power is to erase any technology it punches, seemingly rewriting history as it does so (though the effect may just be to pull all Stand users within a certain area into a parallel world). It cannot delete any technology invented before the year 1500 or any mechanism necessary to human survival (e.g. mechanisms also found in the human body), and all effects end as soon as Carpathia cancels Taking Back Sunday or is rendered unconscious.
The Avalanches - Can induce any sufficiently complex mechanism to emit paranoia-causing radio waves.
The Birthday Massacre - Causes anyone, including the user, in its area of effect to split into two. The original and duplicate are seemingly identical and it is impossible to tell which is which; but the duplicate will die when TBM is deactivated.
Works primarily by 'game theory' - both the original and the duplicate will consider themselves to be the original (having continuity of consciousness and the same memories), and may even try to kill the other; both can control the original's Stand. If the duplicate wins, the user has defeated that person, because they can deactivate TBM at any time and kill the duplicate. The Stand's weakness is the user's duplicate, who can also control and deactivate TBM. However, both user and duplicate know that if the duplicate attacks the user, both die - by working with their copy they can ensure that at least one of them survives. Based on the lyrics to Happy Birthday ("I think my friend said 'two of them are sisters'"). Basically the Stand version of The Prestige.
The Presets - Anything said in its presence echoes and reverberates so it cannot be said and heard again; eventually the area is awash with white noise.
The Way It Is - Stand tells the user the exact probability of any event.
Turmion Kätilöt - Takes the form of a crawling bonfire which grows as it consumes victims. Not entirely under its user's control.
The band name ('Midwives of Destruction') suggested some sort of Stand that gives birth to a destructive force; however this seemed too predictable (and too much like Baby Face from Part 5) and instead I went with a theme following 'Verta ja Lihaa' ("Step into the bonfire/Soul is shouting and nails are scratching/Oh, how it hates blood and flesh").
Toy Soldiers - Victims grow a clockwork key from their back and 'wind down' if it is not turned by another person.
U2 - Creates murderous clones of victim every time they move (Nude Descending A Staircase style).
Makes clones of the victim bud off from them every time they move a set distance - these clones will follow and attempt to kill the original (note that if the victim is a Stand user the clones will not have Stands). The clones will claim to be the original and will try and gain the confidence of the victims' friends. The Stand itself looks like a shiny black robot with a golden ponytail and a single horn in the middle of its forehead.
Weapon of Choice - Centipede-like Stand which nullifies gravity in its area of effect.
Yesterday And Today - Forces victims to relive the same day, which gets progressively worse.
It occurs to me most of my Stand ideas work best as villains the heroes encounter. A few exceptions -
30 Seconds to Mars, Back In The U.S.S.R., Bad Luck, Bullet With Butterfly Wings, Creed, Follow The Leader, Her Bright Skies, Jars of Clay, Mötley Crüe, Napoleon XIV, Nickelback, Rammstein, Rubberbandman, Snot and Switchfoot are all suitably balanced to work as heroes' Stands. I had a dream where Enter Shikari was the protagonist's Stand, but I don't think it would be very entertaining - find out who the bad guy is, wait until ES replays the most angsty part of his backstory, then hit him while he's helpless (never mind that ES is basically Moody Blues Requiem, giving you an intimate insight into any enemy even if you don't attack). Most bad guys in JJBA or otherwise tend to have angsty pasts, which makes them vulnerable to ES; if they've had a moment of total despair or helplessness, replaying it renders them near-transparent and so fragile that a normal human could tear them in half like paper.
Best stands for major antagonists - Abbey Road, For Your Entertainment, Taking Back Sunday, Yesterday and Today. They have the characteristic time/reality warping of major villains and what seems to be flawless hax: Abbey Road is basically permanent timestop that allows you to throw stuff at your victims until they die; For Your Entertainment is potentially a world-destroying Stand; Taking Back Sunday pulls victims through alternate realities, progressively cutting off them off from allies and escape; Yesterday and Today is a more flexible Another One Bites The Dust.
Friday 18 May 2012
Getting Korsakovia working
Korsakovia is a game about madness from the makers of Dear Esther. It's a mod for Half-Life 2 and requires Half-Life 2: Episode 2 to work. Unfortunately, when Valve updated the Source engine, Episode 2 included, in 2010 it broke a lot of mods quite spectacularly. Korsakovia's creator released a patch which did indeed make it possible to fire up Korsakovia again. Unfortunately it's still dogged by crashes. Rather more crucially, there's a catastrophic crash in the final chapter which makes it impossible to complete the game. There's a door that leads to an insanely exploded rendition of the first level's cafeteria, and as soon as you open it and walk through, the game crashes, usually corrupting one or more saved games in the process. You can noclip over the top, but unfortunately that trigger is what loads the next and final chunk of the level - even if you noclip through that portion of the level entirely, you still can't finish the game. Anyway, I managed to find a way around it - making it possible for me to complete my saved game at least - and thought I'd post my solution:
game_info.txt: rewrite contents with following:
---
"GameInfo"
{
// This is what shows up in the 'Third Party Games' area of the Steam games list.
game "Korsakovia"
title "Korsakovia"
type singleplayer_only
developer "thechineseroom"
developer_url "http://www.danpinchbeck.co.uk/dearesther.htm"
icon "resource\Korsakovia"
FileSystem
{
SteamAppId 218
ToolsAppId 211
AdditionalContentID
{
215
380
420
}
SearchPaths
{
Game |gameinfo_path|.
Game sourcetest
Game hl2
Game ep2
Game episodic
}
}
}
---
I additionally used GCFScape to copy the Scenes folder from the HL2 content folder into the Korsakovia folder, though I'm not sure how much that helped the general effort. The result is a Korsakovia that runs extremely smoothly with none of the persistent crashes of my first run-through. Not only that, but textures (like Christopher's hands when wielding the crowbar) are restored which aren't present in the 'patched' version. There are a few mostly cosmetic hiccups - the most prominent being that GFX including the electricity arcs in the last level don't show up, making it harder to complete the platforming sections, but nevertheless - a fixed and working Korsokovia! Thinking it might well be possible to patch the remaining niggles by transferring over the model/GFX/etc folders, so watch this space...
game_info.txt: rewrite contents with following:
---
"GameInfo"
{
// This is what shows up in the 'Third Party Games' area of the Steam games list.
game "Korsakovia"
title "Korsakovia"
type singleplayer_only
developer "thechineseroom"
developer_url "http://www.danpinchbeck.co.uk/dearesther.htm"
icon "resource\Korsakovia"
FileSystem
{
SteamAppId 218
ToolsAppId 211
AdditionalContentID
{
215
380
420
}
SearchPaths
{
Game |gameinfo_path|.
Game sourcetest
Game hl2
Game ep2
Game episodic
}
}
}
---
I additionally used GCFScape to copy the Scenes folder from the HL2 content folder into the Korsakovia folder, though I'm not sure how much that helped the general effort. The result is a Korsakovia that runs extremely smoothly with none of the persistent crashes of my first run-through. Not only that, but textures (like Christopher's hands when wielding the crowbar) are restored which aren't present in the 'patched' version. There are a few mostly cosmetic hiccups - the most prominent being that GFX including the electricity arcs in the last level don't show up, making it harder to complete the platforming sections, but nevertheless - a fixed and working Korsokovia! Thinking it might well be possible to patch the remaining niggles by transferring over the model/GFX/etc folders, so watch this space...
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