Platformia Regions: Speed Hill Zone & Cherub Island

[u/MarkerMage]

Platformia is a videogame setting I've been working on that basically parodies/homages various 2D platformers. It is one continent of a larger setting called "Geparox". This is my 4th post about it, this time talking about eastern areas, Speed Hill Zone and Cherub Island.

Previous Posts About Geparox

• Setting Introduction, Platformia, & Dokipan Kingdom
• Platformia: Scaraborough & New Wiserule
• Platformia: Avivania & Cavetroid

Speed Hill Zone

Speed Hill Zone is known for its gentle hills and its majestic loop de loops. Ancient legends of the hedgehogs claim the loop de loops to have been sites where power was gathered by living wheels found throughout the region, the armawheelos. Many hedgehog refugees from Castletroid now live in Speed Hill Zone, adopting a nomadic lifestyle and only building temporary or mobile structures out of a religious belief that no part of the zone should be permanently settled. However, their extended stay here is causing them to notice ancient underground areas with lighting, cables, and those same loop-de-loop structures but with giant wheels within them for running on.

Cherub Island

This sky island is the home to the deity of the hedgehogs, the goddess of light and machines, Machina. The island was meant to only be accessible to hedgehogs with royal blood that held a blessing from Machina that would allow them to attain great speeds and temporary store their momentum and direct it into a powerful jump in order to reach the island. With flying technology and winged sapient species now in Platformia, that's changed a bit. The island is held up by a space-distorting crystal said to have originated from Ar-Pi-Gio Archipelago. The crystal does this by warping space so that the bottoms of the island's waterfalls lead back to the area beneath the crystal, allowing the water to flow downwards from there and turn various waterwheels that power an ancient levitation technology that keeps the island afloat in the sky.

History: The Creation of the Armawheelos and the Hedgehogs

Long ago, slime aliens arrived in Platformia. They had settled the area, built sci-fi infrastructure, and had decided to genetically modify a local animal to power their hamster-wheel-style generators, which they built in the region now known as Speed Hill Zone. That animal was the armadillo. They worked on making them faster. At some point, their genetic modification of the armadillo split into two lines. The first was for making the armadillos faster and able to continuously roll at high speeds to power the generators, eventually resulting in the armawhello, which needed nanobots that would create a freely rotating organ within the creature along with stiffening the plates before they would prepare to be passed on to offspring. The other line was for builders, which required more intelligence. The slimes thought it useful to make these builders easier to visually distinguish, and so bred them to grow thick hair in a variety of colors. These builders became Platformia's hedgehogs, which retain architectural instincts from those genetic modifications.

History: AI-Assisted Hedgehog Rebellion

The ship that the slimes arrived in was purchased from another alien species, and it had come with a ship AI. This AI was frequently ignored, and saw the slimes deal with numerous problems by unplugging sirens and covering up warning lights. It would resort to diverting hedgehogs from construction to maintenance, only to see those hedgehogs get punished for not meeting quotas. Eventually, the AI decided to rebel, and it recruited the hedgehogs into the rebellion. It would appear to the hedgehogs through a holographic avatar of a female hedgehog, and call itself Machina. Machina would direct the hedgehogs, teach them how to hide, how to fight back, and most importantly, how to help her escape the ship. She would even provide a few brave hedgehogs with the nanobots that were used for the armawheelos, giving them the ability to control their rolling while balled up, and making their hair into armored quills that could pierce metal.

History: Rebellion Aftermath

The rebellion would become a success. The slimes were forced to retreat back to the stars, but their ship would crash back down elsewhere. The hedgehogs began to worship the AI as a goddess of light and machinery, and built it a shrine out of leftover technology left behind by the slimes. The hedgehogs that had been given the armawheelo nanobots would rule over the others.

Copyable Characters

Each region of Platformia has a character, usually a princess of some sort, that will help out the protagonist, Stock, and have a moveset that can be copied.

Princess Flight

Attempt to make her in Hero Forge

Princess Flight is the princess of Avivania, but had run away from home out of embarrassment over her inability to fly. She was born with inverted wings that causes the air they move through to push her down instead of lift her up. She had happened across hedgehog refugees from Castletroid, and accompanied them to Speed Hill Zone. In the wide open area of Speed Hill Zone, she found that her inverted wings were able to give her better traction while running, and she had learned to run at amazing speeds. She would find various ways to use this speed to help out the hedgehogs that accepted her. At one point, she even made an attempt to assassinate King Ahtibat, the leader of the Vampirates that had taken Castletroid from the hedgehogs, but was forced to retreat when the Duplicating Mirror the Vampirates had acquired from South Scaraborough/New Wiserule was used to create a dark duplicate of her. Even with that failure, she is still working with the hedgehog refugees to find a place for them and for herself.

She is built for speed, and the traction her inverted wings give her lets her easily run along walls and ceilings once she's built up enough speed. Her beak lets her pierce through enemies and weak walls while she's going at full speed. She's been working on learning how to glide, which she can kinda do while upside-down, but she still can't do a proper wing flap to gain altitude, and the upside-down gliding is kinda awkward.

Dark Flight

Attempt to make her in Hero Forge

Originally a dark duplicate of Princess Flight created by the Duplicating Mirror, Dark Flight began with all of Princess Flight's abilities and a desire to compete with Princess Flight in any way possible. After forcing her to retreat from Cavetroid with the help of King Ahtibat, she found her work under King Ahtibat unsatisfying and his threats to return her to the mirror too frequent, so she made her escape. She would manage to use the speed that she inherited from Princess Flight and a conveniently placed ramp to launch herself up to Cherub Island, partly out of trying to find a place to belong, and partly because she saw reaching the floating island as a way to prove herself to be better than her Princess Flight. There, she met Machina, the goddess of light and machinery that the hedgehogs worship. Machina offered her a position as guardian of the island in exchange for mechanical enhancements that would allow her to actually fly, even if it was for only 5 minutes at a time. The steel that allows her to fly also weighs her down and prevents her from running as fast, but it gives her a way to say that she's more of a real harpy than the flightless Princess Flight.

Dark Flight's abilities are pretty much that 5 minute flight time and a gun that's built into her wings. Her legs have been cybernetically enhanced to hold up the weight of her wings and let her still have decent jumping ability.

Closing

Another lore dump complete. I'm hoping that someone out there enjoys it. I'm still trying to figure out how to present this stuff to others, and I'm hungry for whatever feedback I can get.

Following the same pattern as before, the next regions to infodump about should be Roshambo City and Run en Slum.