"This City... She's Been Dead... For Years Now..."
The City of Light, named after the hero Doctor Light before his passing, was intended to be the hub of humanity's new home in a distant galaxy after the Invader War ended with Earth's destruction. The City was intended to represent a fresh start on a new planet, one that was selected by the best and brightest minds of mankind to serve as the new cradle of humanity. The survivors of Earth had endured a long and difficult voyage to their new home, losing entire fleets of ships to natural disasters, alien pirates, and even more unexplained happenings. It didn't get any easier when humanity had finally arrived at their new home, either. The 'cradle' they had hoped for was desolate, a windswept world filled with hostile flora and fauna. However, humans were a resilient species. They got to work, setting down the infrastructure they needed from their Arkanoid ships including factories, habitat blocks, and agricultural hubs. Dr. Light had even created devices to aid humanity and automate the terraforming process in the form of M.U.L.E. Walkers and the L-Series Manufacturing Robots (or Lemmings).
It was more work than humanity anticipated, but they endured. There were problems that cropped up. Overpopulation was an issue and while the lack of housing was mitigated somewhat by the Lemming robots, a critical lack of oversight led those machines to develop infrastructure that was both labyrinthine and nonsensical at times. In addition, the various colonies outside and beyond the city had either gone dark or had long since regressed into becoming petty fiefdoms fighting against both each other and the natives. Still, Light knew they would fix these problems so long as everyone rolled their sleeves up and worked together to get it done. With the Systems Integrated Monitor, or "S.I.M." installed at the heart of the city, nobody would want for water, gas or electricity while the necessary housing was being built and would also start to get the Lemmings back on track by providing a centralized intelligence to control the literal fleets of terraforming robots. Things were bad, but they were getting better. But then they got worse. It started small. Wily had taken the Wily-Light Organization that they had built together and had turned it into WilyCorp. Wily assured Light that with Light as the moral heart of the organization, he was worrying over nothing.
He was hesitant. But he still trusted his friend.
Some time later Light Labs exploded, taking the hero of the city with it. Saboteurs were blamed, enemies of the city who hated Light for conflicting reasons that were yet a mystery. Dr. Wily, furious over the death of his friend, had announced that he would do everything that was possible to find these villains and bring them to justice. Little did anyone know, Dr. Light had survived that explosion. Contained within a medical drone he had been working on at the time, the little machine had moved him away from the wreckage towards someplace safe. The City was massive, even only a few years in. The massive zone even had a name- Monsteropolis. There were zones within zones that even people who were born and raised within couldn't recognize and chart their way through. They served as a good hiding place as Light recovered from his wounds.
Light was distraught. He knew who set off that explosion. He wished he didn't.
To Light's horror, The City continued to spiral downwards. Wily grew more and more authoritarian- first mandatory curfews, then increased surveillance. All in the name of the public good. Vid-screens broadcasting whatever Wily wanted the people to see and hear. When even that wasn't enough? New bioroids of his old friend's own design; "Sniper Joes" and "Robot Masters", were rolled out as a "peacekeeping" force. The S.I.M. was dismantled, infected by a virus and stripped of anything useful; not just by Wily, but others as well. That wasn't the worst of it. WilyCorp wasn't the last. New corporations followed Albert's footsteps that lacked even his restraint. The biggest being Eggdyne and Metpharm. A whimsical man, Dr. Eggman was the CEO of Eggdyne and was laser focused on progress, even at the expense of the world around him. The sole reason as to why the City is as polluted as it was, Eggman doesn't even remotely care about the lives underneath him and doesn't do much to hide that.
A good thing for the uplifts, who flocked to his zones in droves, preferring his indifference to rampant racism that the species had faced regularly in the other zones. It also meant that his zones had the shortest life expectancy out of any of the other locations in the city. Unless you were rich or well connected, of course. Then you literally lived above the common masses. Eggman operated mostly out of the Mobius Archipelago within the Metropolis Zone, rolling out wave after wave of "brain chip" equipped badniks as an answer to Wily's bioroids.
Metpharm, on the other hand, was a complete mystery. Originally a collection of biologists, agriculturalists and ecologists, they all came together to form Metpharm, the largest and one of the only sources of medicine, biological research and genetic augmentation in The City. Their CEO is a mystery of which there were only rumors; everything from alien takeovers, a being literally created from scratch to lead the company or something even stranger being theorized but when asked, employees barely breathe a word about them. Metpharm has their center in Palm Zone, which is unlike the rest of the city in that it's not a metal behemoth, instead a verdant paradise where an AI called "Mother" handles the people's every want or need. These three weren't the only ones, merely the most powerful. Other corporations had popped up, such as SilphCo or ZEED, the latter of which began acting as a collection of brick and mortar stores and a courier service once communication between corporate zones began to break down.
Light watched as the city he had hoped to build was corrupted by these giants. He watched as the people gave up, few people fighting back and those that did often being as bad as the Corporations they fought. He saw things that should have been causes for hope or celebration turn sour, like the arrival of the lost colony fleet that had been sucked into a rift in space early on in the voyage only to find their idyllic world burned to the ground by war and the survivors left homeless and destitute. News broadcast after news broadcast of complete tragedies, only to be blown off with a laugh and "so glad we're not over in that zone." There was no hope. The dream he had tried to build had died in its crib.
Light wondered what he was going to do. He paced around, scratching at the scars that were still healing around his body. Something needed to be done. Anything. He wasn't the type to just give up. Not without exhausting all of the options. The city needed to get back on track. It needed help. But how? The city was dark. Colder than he remembered. Was it time to change with it? He racked his brain, trying to look back through his memories to find how things went so wrong. Could he have stopped Wily somewhere in the past? Sat him down and talked to him? Why did he do this to him?
He leaned against a wall, taking a breath. He was ready to make his decision.
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What Decision had Light Come To? [Select One]
[ ] "I refuse to let this city destroy my soul. The people need to know that no matter how dark the city gets there will still be light, but only if we work together and have hope that the future will turn out for the better."
Light is unwilling to bend on what he believes in.
Gain Trait: An Honest Soul
[ ] "This city has changed. I can no longer recognize it. Perhaps it's time to adopt a few changes of my own."
Light is willing to bend his morals in small ways in order to accomplish his goals.
Gain Trait: A Mercurial Mind
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Light's near death experience changed him. He was feeling many things, but one stood out among them all. What was it? [Select One]
[ ] "Everyone failed in the end. Myself. Wily. The City. This is collectively our fault. We could have done better. We should do better now."
Gain Trait: Remorseful
[ ] "He betrayed me. We've been friends for years- we survived the destruction of Earth together! That… that
bastard! He won't get away with this!"
Gain Trait: Wrathful
[ ] "So few people are fighting. Most have given up. Is there any point trying to fix things?"
Gain Trait: Depressed
[ ] "There's so much to do. I have so little time to do it. I need my lab back."
Gain Trait: Traumatized
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His decision made, Light stood leaning over a table, finally free from the last of the bandages. Scattered about on the table were various plans- diagrams, decoded messages and maps to various places around, below and even beyond the city. He had a choice to make. Stay in the city, hiding right underneath Albert's nose. It was risky, very risky, but the city needed him and it afforded too many benefits to consider leaving. However… he could also flee into The Pipeworks. Thousands of people went missing every day. He could be among them. In truth, he barely knew much about what lay beneath beyond what little he could scrounge up in a short amount of time and the various rumors of cults, mutants and chemical runoff.
Still, he had contacts. People who had worked with him and had a vested interest in keeping quiet about it. Groups like the Driller Commune. Or he could find the Caravan of Dreams. He could likely find more about a more benevolent cult, but that would take some time. Light peered down to the final scattered plans. The Outlands. The world was as wild as it was vast and reports said that the lemmings wouldn't reach the outlands for another few decades. It was rough, untamed and far from The City. Most people here completely wrote them off as uneducated, dangerous yokels, and largely ignored them with exception of the various trinkets, stories or popular creatures that showed up occasionally. Various stylized images of the chocobo were plastered in almost every konbini store, for example.
The flora was as hostile as the fauna and he couldn't hope for modern conveniences or parts for his projects, as they would be rare unless he allied with somebody who had connections to the city. Still. The outlands were almost completely unexplored and that same lack of consideration meant the outlands were a near perfect place to hide that wasn't covered in sewage. It also meant he had some level of freedom. While he would need to be careful, rumors or stories of a Dr. Light that survived would be declared bunk by the majority simply because it came from the Outlands of all places. Albert likely wouldn't be fooled, though. He'd come looking.
Where Did Light Choose To Go? [Select One]
[ ] Dr. Right Behind You
He chose to stay in the city.
The city is massive, almost continent-spanning, and we will primarily be focused around the WilyCorp zones. More specifically, Monsteropolis, which is basically several zones smushed together of which WilyCorp Towers stands directly in the middle of. The further you go out, the more dilapidated the city looks. This is (mostly) CAPCOM related zones, though things like the SNK, Mishima Autonomous Zone and the street fighter shared universe areas like Metro, Auharu and others are nearby in their own zones. River City is somewhere in that direction too. Raccoon City Zone shares a border with Metpharm (bordered by Arklay Mountainous Region) and it's where Wily's S.T.A.R.S program has their main stomping ground. Better outfitted, though. They're Cult Hunters in this Universe. You want to strike Wily right at the heart of his base, here's where you would do it. The Robot Masters have their own little bases located all over the place. Mind yourself though. Wily doesn't like you. He thought he killed you, after all.
[ ] Light In The Depths
He chose to descend into the depths of the Pipeworks.
The city is as deep as it is tall, and just as wide. Like above, this will primarily be Nintendo stuff. Dig Dug, Kirby, even the Mario Bros are messing around down here somewhere. It's a nasty place, full of chemical runoff and whatever escapes into the sewers (which happens to be a lot of things. Thanks, Metpharm.) What chemical runoff doesn't end up here ends up in the Outlands. As a result things tend to see in the dark down here, and the fungus has literally taken a life of its own. Entire zones have also been swallowed, forever-dark locations lit up only by ghost lights and glowing fungus often haunted by weird ghosts and other spooky things. There's rumors that there's a freaky giant turtle-dragon scheming at the molten core of the Pipeworks, too. Here's where you go if you want to deal with mutants, strange fungal growths, rampant terraforming robots, spooky ghosts, insane cults, (Kirby has one of his own- The Cult of the Devourer) and your very best impression of Zaunite culture, since it's not all that far off. There are entire communities down here and not all of them are friendly. Most of them are downright criminals.
[ ] Light in the Distance
Light chose to take his chances in the outlands.
The Outlands. The land of the JRPGs. And things like Castlevania. Yes, unfortunately Dracula spawned somewhere dark and spooky, much to the chagrin of the last survivors of the Belmont family who were sure Earth being blown up was the last they would see of the bastard. 'Short and Brutal' would be the terms that would best describe the place. Well, except for Kong Country, which seems to be doing just fine. If you like magic, the great outdoors or weird, psychic stuff there's no place in this setting that deals with the Dreamlands more than the Outlands. The flora is just as vicious as the fauna, and both are often oversized, guns and tanks have been replaced with more reliable things like massive swords and bows, and there are native species like the Goron and the Moogle that you can chat it up with. It's a Magi-Techno Barbarian paradise, if you're into that. Like He-Man or She-Ra, if they lived in a JRPG world. Still, the place has its quirks. You'll still find some friendly, if hardy, people here. Even some of the monsters are friendly, and there's odder sorts, too. Like funny magicians in hats arguing with cloaked figures on whether 'Fire' or 'Frizz' is the superior fire-aligned spellword, or barely clothed girls offering strange things called 'Puff Puffs'. It's an unexplored wild rife with exploitation and research. We know this because that's exactly what the other corporations are doing too.
Depending on your choice, you will be able to pick from up to 5 factions from those locations, or choose to go alone and build up your own faction.
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Hey there, everybody. Welcome to LightQuest! What is LightQuest? It's a CK2/3 based quest centered around Dr. Light and his attempt to bring some hope to (or just take bloody revenge against) a cyberpunk dystopia. This takes place within the 8 Bit Dystopia setting, in which various retro video games to a soft cutoff point of the PS1 era games are smashed together inside a sprawling cyberpunk hellscape. If you want S.T.A.R.S fighting against a death cult dedicated to Kirby, Little Macintosh entering into the King of Fighters tournament or Solid Snake joining with Simon Belmont to take down Dracula, this setting is for you.
The heroes still exist (actually, everyone's stories are just getting started), but everything is all jumbled and they have a hell of an uphill battle to fight. Maybe you can help them. They're gonna need it.
The default goal of this quest is if not freeing the city from the corporations, then at least taking down Wily. This can change depending on your choices as Light might find other problems needing solved beforehand, but by default that's where the quest is focused. Regardless if you end up fighting against Wily or the Corporations or not, ideally you'll be bringing some Light to a City that desperately needs it. Whether that means setting it all on fire or instilling some hope and hurting the corporations is up to you.
