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Quest Idea Thread

Gotta Go Fast... to the Box Office! [Sonic the Headhog Producer Quest]

What does the world of Mobius look like to those who dream of the silver screen? What do they see when they gaze upon its emerald hills, glistening cities, and fiery sunsets, imagining their stories told across the Archipelago?

To the ancients of Mobius, storytelling was an oral tradition, etched in firelight and passed down through generations. Heroes and villains, monsters and myths—these tales lived on the tongues of the old, who wove them into the stars and shaped the destiny of their descendants.

Even as civilization advanced, the hunger for stories grew. From shadow plays under the moon to reels spun through mechanical projectors, the Mobians built theaters and crafted cameras, learning the power of the moving image. Bit by bit, they transformed their world, their tales of heroism and heartbreak no longer limited to spoken word or paint on a canvas, but immortalized in film.

And now, Mobius stands on the brink of its next great cinematic age—or so they claim.

In truth? The Mobian movie industry is in shambles. Studios churn out thoughtless sequels, chasing profits rather than passion, while the art of filmmaking withers on the vine. The magic is fading.

But not for long.

Because you are here.

Not to become a star, but to create them. Not to steal the spotlight, but to build the stage. You're a producer, a dreamer with a vision grand enough to rival the peaks of the Mystic Ruins.

All you need now is a place to build your empire. Where will your story begin?

[ ] Green Hills City
A sleepy town nestled among rolling landscapes and glowing sunsets, Green Hills is a serene backdrop for creativity. Its charm lies in its simplicity, offering a quiet sanctuary for those seeking inspiration.
  • The Quiet Muse: Green Hills' calm atmosphere provides the perfect space for creativity to bloom. Writers, artists, and filmmakers looking to escape the noise of larger cities often flock here.
  • Low-Cost Living: Rent is cheap, and so is everything else. Starting your studio here will leave you with more Mobiums to spend on your projects.
  • Small Town, Small Market: There aren't many people to impress here, and getting your films to a wider audience will be an uphill battle.
  • Meddling Genius: Rumors swirl of a local scientist whose experiments often disrupt power grids and create strange phenomena. Starting a studio here might mean adapting to frequent "technical difficulties."
[ ] Mobotropolis
The bustling capital of Kingdom of Acorn is a city of opportunity, ambition, and relentless pace. Its towering skyscrapers and neon-drenched streets are a magnet for dreamers and doers from across the Archipelago.
  • Talent Everywhere: With so many people flocking to Mobotropolis, the city is a hotbed of actors, directors, and writers hungry for a chance to shine.
  • State-of-the-Art Facilities: The best equipment, editing suites, and production houses are right at your fingertips.
  • Sky-High Costs: Rent and wages are exorbitant, and your studio's budget might evaporate faster than you can say "action."
  • Baron Politics: Big players dominate Mobotropolis, and they don't take kindly to competition. Navigating the city's film scene could mean facing interference—or outright sabotage.
[ ] Sunset City
A dazzling coastal hub of glamor and excess, Sunset City is where the Archipelago comes to play. From its sparkling beaches to its glittering nightlife, it's a haven for the rich and famous—and those who want to be.
  • Built-In Audience: Sunset City's constant influx of tourists means your films could have a ready-made audience before they even hit theaters.
  • Star Power Central: The city's allure draws Mobius's biggest names. Getting a high-profile actor or director on board might be easier than you think.
  • Style Over Substance: The locals care more about appearances than artistry. If your films don't sparkle, you'll struggle to find support.
  • Unstable Foundations: The coastline is prone to erosion, and freak storms are known to wreak havoc. Setting up shop here might be a risky investment.
 
I recently read The Last Days of New Paris and felt the desperate compulsion to turn it into a quest and so I've mocked up this quick little intro post to see what people think! Looking for some feedback on the disciplines as I'm not fully happy with the selection atm, plus would love to know if the fluff makes the premise clear enough.

LONDON-BY-NIGHT​

You can recall, with morose precision, where you were those six years ago when Nightfall came for London.

It had been a small crowd gathered in the Warren Street underground station at half 3 on a Tuesday afternoon. The faint scream of Luftwaffe bombers could be heard through the steel and concrete burrow you hid in. A low hum of nervous chatter filled the gaps in between the bombs dropping, the mood was anxious yet optimistic; the Nazis' first assault onto the beaches of Sussex and Kent had been repelled, the Americans were beginning to ship men and supplies to the British isles en masse, and the Royal Navy seemed primed to retake the channel any day now.

The shudders that reverberated through the Underground made such talk seem hollow.

You could feel it beginning, everyone in the city could. A tension building in the gut, the hairs on the back of your neck standing on edge, the edges of your vision growing blurred. A child cries out, an old woman falls to her knees and begins to cough blood, a man in a banker's suit screams out and runs out onto the rail tracks, disappearing into the shadowy labyrinth beyond the station. Then something shifted, a long forgotten organ in the back of your skull tensed and a door opened.

The most immediate effect of Nightfall was Vertigo, a terrible lurching disorientation that sent you sprawling against the cold hard floor cracking your nose painfully and letting out a small stream of blood. You were one of the lucky ones. Others in the crowd began to scream in strange tongues, they stared at their fellow Londoners with expressions of perfect horror and began to claw at their eyes. Some began to change, cruel new limbs erupting from their bodies in agonising viscera. In a moment of perfect social communion, did this mass of Humanity panic, the crowd surged from the platform and up the narrow stairway to the surface, bombs be damned.

You felt the primitive instinct of collective fear overtake you and surged forth with the crowd. Someone ahead of you fell, you could hear them scream as hundreds of boots came down upon them in the mad dash to escape, they fell silent by the time you passed above them.

By some minor miracle were you able to stay on your feet and move with the crowd up out of the dark into the world above, yet something was wrong. As you burst out into the cold air of the surface you look up to the sky above and see a black and starry night.
The screams are all around you now. There are madmen on the street, they wave flaming torches and give devotions to the newly shrouded sky. There are policemen amongst them as well, they wave their rifles about and fire into the dark, it takes you a second to realise that it is not the madmen that they are firing at.

It rides atop a stag whose antlers are wreathed in mistletoe. It is a slender thing, a sharp thing, its limbs are too long to be human. Its face is beautiful and is alighted by a smile of black mirth, its teeth glisten like a knife in the dark. It is encased in a suit of bright green armour, fashioned with such embellishments and ornamentations that it strikes you as a parody of those suits of armour you've seen at museums and exhibitions. The bullets that strike it ricochet off and fall to the ground about it, you swear you see a shot arc through the air and strike the thing right on its forehead only for the bullet to slide off the thing's incandescent flesh.

The Knight-Thing regards the nearest police officer with its cold eyes, a silent communion is held in the fraction of a second. Where the officer once stood is a thing that wears his clothes and models after his likeness, it is static and silent, a perfect model of glass where flesh and blood once stood. The Knight-Thing raises its head and regards the panicked crowd.

You screw your eyes tight and cower before your coming vitrification. For a dreadful, agonizing minute do you wait for the change to overtake you, to feel your lungs still and your veins turn stiff in your flesh. It does not come. Cautiously you open your eyes and shakily bring yourself to stand, you look around and find yourself amongst a forest of glass. Every figure before you is sculpted in excruciating detail, through their translucent skin you can see the full measure of their once-living nervous systems.

The hair on the back of your neck stands to attention, you slowly begin to turn. The Knight-Thing stares down at you with those cold eyes which glimmer like the strange stars above, it really is quite beautiful. It reaches a long slender hand towards you and brushes its spindly fingers against your cheek, every primitive instinct in your body screams for you to run, to cower, to hide but you remain frozen in place. The Thing retracts its hand and smiles warmly, as though it has completed some minor yet frustrating errand. It glides away from you gracefully and mounts its steed, riding off into the dark night that has become London.

You kneel amidst the glassy corpses of your fellow man and begin to scream.



The year is 1948 and it has been 6 years since London fell to Nightfall. The streets of London are stalked by witch-officers of the gestapo accompanied by wights of the Unseelie Court. The New King, who holds neither face nor name, rules from his palace at the Mithraeum-In-Spring and grants visions of sunlight to those collaborators who swear fealty to Royalty and Reich. The city has been cast under the pallour of an eternal night for 6 long years and dreadful things have come to lurk in the darkened alleys and crevices of London. The occupation has held an iron grip upon spheres both material and metaphysical, yet their façade of invincibility is cracking.

The fascist feuds with the fae, their visions of the reality to come grow increasingly incompatible and the crackle of bullets impacting against moonlit armour can be heard across the city with increasing frequency. The people of London, both hidden and mundane, grow tired of their oppression. The pacts that were struck by the Germans to make Sealion possible are not only open to their ilk and a new epoch of magic has come to settle upon London.

You are a magician of this new age, and you have sworn vengeance upon your oppressors.

CHOOSE YOUR DISCIPLINE:

[] THAUMATURGY - You are a Wonderworker; a disciple of the more physical magicks. Through the power of Thaumaturgy you are capable of manipulating the world around you, be it through the re-knitting and breaking of flesh or if it be the summoning of physical objects and the manipulation of their properties. This is a potent discipline for going on the offensive and turning oneself into an instrument for resistance, yet it is quick to draw attention and it might be hard to keep your actions secret from the occupiers.

[] GOETIA - You are a summoner; an invoker of terrible things. Through the art of Goetia will you be able to drag all manner of monsters and devils into the material plane to do your bidding in the name of the resistance, if they find themselves amicably disposed, you may even be able to call upon angels to your assistance. This discipline would allow you to act with a greater degree of subtlety yet you would be well warned to keep a close eyes on the beasts you drag through the mirror.

[] ALCHEMY - You are a journeyman; a concocter of sorceries in vials and tubes. For the more self-respecting magician, this art borders dangerously close to the world of the natural sciences yet such proximity to the more mundane arts provides ample space for integration. Through the power of alchemy you will be able to create powerful potions and artefacts with which you might bolster the resistance as a whole, furthermore some familiarity with the natural sciences might allow for you to integrate the two and construct powerful new examples of artificary.
 
NEW ENGLAND GOES TO THE POLLS FOR FIRST TIME SINCE END OF WAR​

On 15 August 1947, the people of New England will go to the polls for the first time since the end of the second world war in this century. The Federalists, led by Chief Secretary Charles Adams, hope to retain and even improve on their modest majority. They promise to unlock investment and deal with New England's growing balance-of-payments problems. They will unleash the latent energies of New England through an intelligent shepherding of New England business and removal of unnecessary and burdensome government regulations. Only the Federalist party can preserve the Social State of New England and its generous programs of social aid from the threats of competition abroad and economic instability at home.

The main opposition is the Progressive Labor Alliance (PLA), the architects and engineers (with the Liberal party in coalition) of the most impressive wings of the Social State, including the New England Health Administration (NEHA). The PLA was interrupted in its "revolution in government" with the return of the Federalists to power in 1940. Led by Sanford Schumacher, the son of Danish immigrants to Boston, the PLA seeks the nationalization of "the commanding heights of the economy", the creation of a supplemental pension system to ensure that social guarantees covers all aspects of life "from cradle to the grave", and massive state-directed investment to reinvigorate the old New English economy and bring it into the modern age, including an ambitious program for the development of New English hydropower and an agreement to join onto the North American project for a St. Lawrence Seaway.

Two minor parties play a role that is, of course, minor but not negligible. The venerable Liberal Party, a national institution that in the middle of the last century, under the guidance of that rightfully renowned and soberly steadfast moral paragon Charles Francis Adams the elder, made New England renowned as a moral leader throughout the world in its zealous determination to banish slavery from every last inch of the North American continent. The party has of late seen itself fall from its positions as the nation's moral conscience and opposition-party-in-chief within a single generation. Its persistence is mainly due its long-term strength in the Yankee north, where there persists a spirit of agrarian independence and religious nonconformism not suitable to the proletarian modernism of the PLA nor the staid conservatism of the Federalists. It also has some support from reformist businessmen in southern New England who are not convinced by the industrial strategy or social philosophy of the Federalists. When they are not the party of someone's father, the Liberals might be the natural home of North Americanism and incremental social reform.

Just as the Liberals are the northern, agrarian analogue of the PLA (and this analogy must not be stretched much, if at all), the home of conservatism in the northern hill country of New England is Social Credit, a transnational North American movement that is nevertheless fiercely parochial in its outlook. Its idiosyncratic outlook, centered on the philosophy of the iconoclast philosopher-engineer Major Douglas, is essentially a populist outrage against the machinations of international capitalism (described as "international finance" by its more sophisticated advocates). This conservatism socialism, as most conservative socialisms throughout history, is also coextant with a nasty prejudice against New England's recent immigrant groups - the Irish, the Quebecois, the Polish, the Portuguese, and, last but not least, Jews of all nationalities. At its most articulate, Social Credit envisions an end to the disastrous system of paper money and modern production and its replacement with a monetary system that would properly stimulate business and reward honest men for their sober industry . In practice, it is often a sharp populist breeze that bites more than it soothes. It seems that the spirit of puritanism at some point suffered a diremption, with one child of the split turning to left-wing radicalism and the other to reactionary populism. Social Credit's leader is fittingly an itinerant preacher, or the modern analogue, a radio host. Gerrit Monroe is a national figure, a reminder to refined Europe that though New England may be the most sophisticated of North American nations, it is still a creature of the New World.

Below are relevant excepts from the leaders of the two major and minor parties:

Federalist Party
​

From a speech by Charles Adams, leader of the Federalists:

"...The world we knew before the war is gone. The world that I knew as a child is in the deep bosom of the ocean buried. We who have lived through through these awful decades have had enough strife and upheaval for a thousand lifetimes. Now is the time to return to the boring hum-drum of routine living. Now is the time for the citizen to retire peacefully to the tending of his and his neighbor's gardens. The sounds of state should be like a distant memory, present only by an occasional ringing of the ear - scars of his generation. Scars that should be drowned out by the tranquil and steady seaside rhythms of the Atlantic and the slow idylls of his native pine blowing in the wind...

...The opposition may shout as much as they please about 'bourgeois reactionaries' and 'blood-drinking capitalists.'* I have never considered myself beholden to any particular class or ideology. When it comes time to make a decision, I have found that the boundless and broad wisdom of humanity knows no class and no ideology. Reform and compassion are not the private property of the socialist nor on the other hand is responsibility and intelligence only found amongst those of the proper breeding and education. They are available to any man who is patient and humble enough to accept when he is being narrowly self-centered or when he is out of his depth and uninformed.

Our government shall continue to be a government of responsibility and intelligence, of reform and compassion, and of all these in their proper time, proper place, and proper proportion. 'There is a time for sowing, and a time for harvesting' and so on. Likewise there is a time for reform and a time for moderation. Nations, like people, have their youth, their maturity, and their old age, but unlike people, nations may from time to time be reborn and begin their life anew with the knowledge of past errors. We who have lived through these past decades have seen our country die, be reborn, and struggle through a most violent youth.

Now we settle into maturity - not old age! I reject without reservation and without qualification the gloomy claim that this country is old. Do not mistake the mere possession of a prosperous past for old age. More importantly, do not mistake wisdom for infirmity. If we follow the opposition headlong into four years of violence and foolish utopianism, this country just might enter old age and infirmity and do so as a penniless pauper. The opposition is there correct that New England might become infirm, but it will only become so if this country decides that the correct preventative for infirmity is to further strangle the circulatory system of business, the lifeblood of a nation, with inefficient, ineffective, and incompetently managed nationalizations and public works schemes, and through onerous and burdensome regulations and taxation, the proceeds of which will be spent not for the benefit of the public but for the wages of the many millions of new useless government clerks that shall staff these doomed Grand Canals.

If New England is to stave off infirmity and maintain its vigorous maturity, it must ensure that business is given the proper arena in, and equipment with, which it can flourish. We must unleash the creative energies of the people, not stifle them. We must shun most (though not all) national, public works programs and inefficient schemes of nationalization. We must encourage the development of local business, which always knows better than distant government, which in its effort to understand local conditions almost always irreversibly alters them (usually to the detriment of the locals), smothering the wondrous complexity of local conditions, replacing them with an unimaginative, ineffective uniformity fit only for the purposes of comprehension. Not for the locals' comprehension, for they already spoke the language of their homes, but rather for the comprehension of hollow-headed bureaucrats.

The most serious problem facing the economy of New England today is the balance-of-payments. We shall fix it with trade, by restricting frivolous and unnecessary imports. We shall fix with a responsible policy of North American integration. We shall not sell New English ports down the St. Lawrence river, but we shall seek continental projects that will benefit this country. We shall work with the other nations of this continent for the creation of North American Payments Union to promote multilateralism and efficiency in trade. We shall also seek a North American Trade Area and use it to secure guarantees for New English industries that are threatened by foreign competition. We read daily about the gains of Southern textile firms, where the workers are underpaid and work long hours, over our New English firms, where the workers receive very generous wages, the executives are old and paid less than their Yankee and Southern counterparts (not to mention their Californian rivals), where the unions are resistant to changes in techniques or improved, more productive work loads, and where the plants are often outdated and slow-to-change..."

* In March, The Boston Daily Herald reported the off-the-record remarks of the PLA's Shadow Interior Minister describing the President of the New England Racing Commission as a "bourgeois reactionary" and a "heartless capitalist who keeps bottles of race horse blood in his wine cellar." After several weeks of vacillation, the PLA announced the Shadow Interior Minister's resignation in what has been described as both a "non-apology" by Federalists and Liberals and a "cowardly betrayal of a loyal adherent of the revolution" by the rank-and-file of the PLA.

Progressive Labor Alliance
​

From a speech by Sanford Schumacher at the 25th Plenary Conference of the PLA:

"...Do not be mistaken. There is a war in this country between the rich man and the ordinary fella, and so far the ordinary fella is getting licked...The youthful energy and exuberant creativity that made our textile industry the envy of the world in the 19th century has long since passed away. What do the fat-cat executives offer as an excuse for the decline of New English industry? They say that they are not paid enough. They say 'if only middle-management and the C-suite could afford a second yacht, then perhaps the conveyor belts would move a little faster and roar a little louder. But it's not enough, they say, that we get paid better.' Our workers , they say, are 'paid too much and work too little!' If the textile man had it his way, the workers of this country, the fellas who actually make things, would work for half the wages of the Southern textile worker, most of whom were in chains a generation ago.

It is an insult to the intelligence of the people of this great country that the textile man thinks we will buy this horse manure. The Cambridge and New Haven economists, having never in his cushy life stepped foot in a textile factory, somehow claims to know the inner mind of the textile worker better than he does himself. I was on the factory floor myself for many years as a young man. I can tell you that if someone told me my wages were getting cut, I wouldn't magically cough out more shoes. But if the darned wheels were fixed, if I had enough time off for leisure and to recover my body and mind, if I knew that I was making enough money to keep my family fed and clothed, and if I had a say in the production and management of my factory, which I and every other fella on the floor of it knew better than any C-suite louse or ivory tower bookworm, then my boys and I could have made enough shoes for the entire continent..."

Liberal Party
​

From an interview of Archibald Lyman by the Yankee cultural affairs paper, The New Yorker:

"INTERVIEWER: Mr. Lyman, in an interview given when you first became leader four years ago you decried the falling level of public debate in your country. Has it improved in the time since?

LYMAN: It has gotten worse - much worse. The people in my country are bombarded daily by either hysterical reactionary ranting or dimwitted socialist dogma. I am not just talking about the growing sensationalism of the newspapers nor the fact that there are probably only ten men in government today who could quote Cicero to you. I am referring to a general malaise amongst the people. I am referring an unwillingness to cultivate the mind and take an active part in public discussion of serious matters of national interest. How can we expect to deal with the balance-of-payments problem if the average voter could not tell you what it is?

A weak and unengaged citizenry is a problem for any republic, but it is a particular problem for my country. Part of our national identity is our public spiritedness. The town halls of New England have long been the envy of the world, so deeply respected that they are compared with the direct democracy of classical Athens. But I suppose that today we are more like the Athenians that sentenced Socrates to death than the ones that gave birth to Western culture.

Our universities are still the envy of the world, but they have become increasingly closed off from public debate. They are no longer interested in mere national matters but turn either outward to the world or inward to solitary scholarship. This is why I have advocated for the establishment of a national university that would disseminate lectures through the radio and television..."

Social Credit
​

From the popular radio broadcast of Gerrit Monroe:

"...'God has abandoned this country'. So often do I hear this in the churches around the country. It is true that if you measured out the piety of the most devoted Christian alive today in this country, it would look like a drop of water in the ocean when compared to the worship of our forefathers.

But it is almost blasphemous to then claim that God has abandoned us.

God never abandons his children!

*pause, then he mutters* God never abandons us...

The Lord visits us every second of every day, but we see him only through a glass darkly, a glass sullied by our own sin. That is why even many supposed servants of the Lord today claim that God is not with us. They mistake their poor seeing for a lack of what is to be seen. As a shepherd does not abandon his sheep, so the Lord does not abandon His children. He abides with them always. Only we sometimes lose sight of Him even when He sit besides us. Such is the height of our pride that we assume that the fault is not in ourselves but in our stars.

When I was a child, people saw better. I grew up in a good Christian household that was surrounded by other good Christian households. I learnt the value of worship every day and I learnt the value of hard work. I learnt the virtues of humanity that the Lord wishes to see developed. I learnt a love of His creation. I must have walked through hundreds of miles of forests, hills, mountains, and done so next to waters as clear as any have ever been since the time of Eden. I learnt a love of my country. I learnt that the only things that should grow are God's creations, not the machinations of man like government or money.

Today, the waters are no longer so clear. The forests and hills no longer so green. Money and government grow ten times larger than any natural thing could grow in its lifetime. In my life, I have seen two world wars. I have seen government extend its reach into every last corner of life and nature. I have seen big business and big banks squeeze every last dollar out of the honest fella of this country..."
 
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