frostbite-au

[frostbite-au]

Come back, I have to tell you the plot of a fic I’ll never write and get you excited about it so we can all be disappointed with me later

[frostbite-au]

Waaaa it makes me very very happy that you like it <3 Thank you for reading all that and enjoying it! It does mean a lot. And trust me there were. Way more diversions I went into originally. As someone who easily goes on massive disgressions I love my humble friend the footnote so much~ And I shall continue to diverge, just to comment on your comments, because I am confusing that way!

Chao being as varied as they are throughout the series sure does require some mental gymnastics to explain their behaviors and traits. A lot of it boils down to 'they're a lot like pokemon' for me. I really wish I could mod and add some chao stuff; I'd add my own character chao in a heartbeat. Especially Metal Sonic. As it is, there is a nice mod on gamebanana that has villain chao (I want to say Mephiles, Sage, Infinite, and Shadow's gremlin brother that I'm blanking on?) and some contact packs so you can give other chao their eyes, which is cool!

It's possible for someone to have a chao and be an absolute jerk to it -- you can even kill the poor things in the game, after all (Adventure 1 on Dreamcast I believe) -- but game chao are also universally averse to those that abuse them and try to get away. So it's safe to say that if you see a guy who has a chao that's constantly with him and bein' all cute with him the way Ziz does, that the guy is at the very least good with small animals, which is a green flag. Plus it's hard to swing at a dude if he's holding a puppy.

Eheheh you got it exactly right; he can't be as reckless and mean as he might want to be if he has a chao to consider. Giving him a chao covers a lot of story ground, but probably most important is nerfing him through obligation to keep her safe and happy. Plus it limits his ability to travel quickly or just bail anytime something happens, since he can't take anything (outside of Chaos Emeralds) with him when he does that shadow-walking thing and goes goopy. He's in a bit of a rush, but not enough of a rush to abandon Ziz once he's gotten attached. He's pathetic and needs therapy.

I'm real glad you like the chao lore stuff~ It'd sure be a shame if I rambled out more of it, cause I haven't ever actually written it down... But I'll move that to the other ask you gave me ;)

Anyhow Mephiles has it pretty good as a natural wellspring of chaos; a pet/kid that just feeds off of Vibes would be wonderfully low-maintenence, wouldn't it?

Yeah the differences and similarities between the Supers keeps it interesting; and also creates some drama. Some of them get along; some of them don't; some just tolerate each other. They are creatures of *chaos*, after all. Everything in the natural 'order' breaks eventually. And then you get issues like firey hellscapes and the planet exploding. Good thing mortals on this planet are scrappy!

And no prob on the brain thing, I get that a lot, and for way less worthy reasons,, but you got it in one, Gold is Solaris ;) Eldest behind Green; embodiment of Light and Darkness both; represented by the Sun and representative of Time. He's one of the most powerful Emeralds, although he's lost some respect in immortal circles for getting a bit too... Invested in LARPing with the meatbags. He just thinks people are Neat. Although lately that opinion has been going through some... Challenges... Given... Y'know... The everything...

Anyhow that's it for now yaaayyy sorry it took forever but hey I have a dood of Meph and Ziz bein sleepy

You said that Mephiles has a service chao; what are they like? How do they help him with his disabilities? You also mentioned the Super Emeralds as distinct entities, I would LOVE to hear more about that as well👀

Thank you for the ask; you are very kind; I appreciate you <3

-cracks Knuckles- Aight here's a text wall; and this is after I cut out a lot that seemed to digress too far.

Mephiles's chao is named Ziz, and this is her (/he/it/they it doesn't super matter I'm just happening to use 'she' at the moment)

Ziz meets Mephiles pretty much right before her final evolution, so she's already a few reincarnations in; this puts her at the sentience/sapience level somewhere between '8 year old' and 'border collie'¹. So essentially a real smart dog that also understands most conversation.

She's of course very sweet and adores Mephiles the way the game chao who are bonded with a specific character do; but she's also independent enough to get very annoyed with him if she thinks he's being too stubborn/angry/a jackass, and makes her opinions known. She's very manipulative with this — she takes after her handler — but at least she uses that power for good more often than not.

She's also a bit birdish in nature, so she has a few quirks, like loving shiny things and eating the occasional small animal.

As far as what she does to help Meph out, it's quite varied, between categories of physical, mental, and magical.

If he's in a weakened state² which makes him very stiff (call that magic turbo arthritis) then she can help him with things like fetching objects; using finer motor skills; being a living hot water bottle (this is a thing real animals have been bred for and I think that's cool); and on the occasion where he might have been floored by someone or exhausted himself or something like that, she can help him get up. She's a very sturdy half power type³, taller on her toes, and Meph weighs approximately three tangerines, so it's not hard for her to prop him up or pull him a bit.

More subtlely, she also helps keep his social venom in check, by doing anything from poking to biting him if his figurative magical blood pressure gets too high. Or if he's lying for no good reason. Or if he's just being a jerk. He'd get into way more fights if she wasn't there; to the point that honestly his only hope of success in anything involving the cooperation of the other 06-present characters is pretty dependent on her moderation and grounding. It also doesn't hurt that people are a bit more willing to give the benefit of the doubt to someone who has a chao that obviously trusts them.

Plus she's just the first real positive force in his life in well over 200 years, so she's definitely doing a lot to make him slightly less insane just by being present. Can't be too reckless and destructive if you have a kid/pet to think of.

And lastly she makes it way easier to handle chaos energy in the kinds and amounts he needs to sometimes, since here chao are pretty much beings of chaos energy, and can use it and store it. Her being able to stash the kinds of chaos energy he can't comes in handy quite a bit.

Of course she's getting plenty from the relationship, too. Firstly, Solaris had a chao himself at one point, and knew plenty of others, so Mephiles is well aquainted with the care of chao and isn't about to let anything bad happen to one if he can help it. Secondly, chao also get enrichment from exposure to chaos energy hotspots, and Mephiles *is* a chaos energy hotspot; so she gets a lot of ambient energy just by being around him, and later from dealings with Iblis. Lastly, Meph's a total pushover for her, so she can get her way pretty much any time she wants. It's a pretty good deal in exchange for playing fetch, being an emotional support animal, and occasionally needing to keep her spikey dummy from falling off of something👍

With the Supers/Emeralds in general, there's a toonnnnn of stuff going on with them here. Too much to write down in one spot; but I can try to get the basics down.

The meta level preamble; I was a kid when I decided on a lot of how this worked, so I disregard most canon after 06; so no 'the chaos emeralds are alien' stuff.

Instead, they're all more like forces of nature condensed; with the Chaos Emeralds as sort of extensions or aspects of their respective Supers, and the Master as the 'Master' of the Supers, and by extension the Chaos Emeralds. The Master is their originator, and on the rare occasion it deigns to interfere, their shepherd⁴. Typically the Supers' main (Emerald) forms are supposed to be on display in the Hidden Palace with the Master Emerald, though they did scatter into other areas and special zones after the Chaos⁵/Knuckles Clan incident, and only came back when summoned by the Chaos Emeralds in S3/K.

They all have their own quirks and different ways they work, but some things are consistent. None of the Chaos Emeralds or the Master Emerald have much in the way of persona, although they all do 'think' to an extent, and make decisions in the canonical nebulous way. Most of the Supers, however, are pretty much full-blown Creature status; although they run a range of how people-like they want to be. Gold is the closest to people — to what some consider a problematic degree — while Green in the furthest, and is only a bit more of an entity than the Master.

The Supers main associations are in natural phenomena, but they also have more abstract aspects, and even more abstract abstract aspects; including their own anti-aspects. The basics, though, are these⁶:

Green -- Life (Death/Lifelessness)

Cyan -- Water (Deluge/Drought)

Blue -- Wind (Gales/Doldrums)

Purple -- Sky (Presence/Void)

Red -- Earth (Grand Scale/Small Scale)

White -- Mind (Consciousness/Obscurity)

Gold -- Light (Burning/Absence of light)

Three of these guys are canon characters already. Perhaps Gold's identity is a bit obvious :P

¹ There's a whole Can Of Worms I have about explaining why sometimes the chao we see in game are more like pets, yet there's also chao that talk and have jobs and stuff; basic answer is chao keep leveling up in sapience depending on a bunch of factors, but especially how long they've been around/how much they've evolved.

² Variable depending on how much he's exerted himself; when he last rested; the time of day; the temperature; if someone just punched him in the face; lots of things.

³ In game logic she'd be considered a 'Solaris chao'; adjacent to Chaos chao. Obtainment would be the same process, except with high stats in power/flying instead of balanced, and a required hero alignment. For funsies I'd also make it so doing the same thing but with dark and neutral alignment got you Mephiles and Iblis chao respectively.

⁴ It's hyperbolic and not just a little tongue-in-cheek, but some of the Supers in the modern day refer to the Master as 'Mother' (and the others as siblings); which is kind of funny, since even the Supers — as eldritch beings — consider the Master Emerald an eldritch being. Their mama; the inscrutable cosmic entity(/maybe horror)

⁵ The Supers would probably think it's weird that Chaos is called the same thing as the Chaos Emeralds and the energy they all use. Here it's probably a mistranslation from something more like 'Change', and it's only in modern day that Chaos the character is called Chaos.

⁶ Unless I change them. I'm still hemming and hawing the wording and the secondary aspects for some.

Wow, did you really read all that? Damn! Thank you very much! I owe you... Actually managing to get something drawn sometimes ^.^'

Edit: Do I need to tag askers?? Legit don't remember. To be safe: @dyke-mecha

[frostbite-au]

You said that Mephiles has a service chao; what are they like? How do they help him with his disabilities? You also mentioned the Super Emeralds as distinct entities, I would LOVE to hear more about that as well👀

Thank you for the ask; you are very kind; I appreciate you <3

-cracks Knuckles- Aight here's a text wall; and this is after I cut out a lot that seemed to digress too far.

Mephiles's chao is named Ziz, and this is her (/he/it/they it doesn't super matter I'm just happening to use 'she' at the moment)

Ziz meets Mephiles pretty much right before her final evolution, so she's already a few reincarnations in; this puts her at the sentience/sapience level somewhere between '8 year old' and 'border collie'¹. So essentially a real smart dog that also understands most conversation.

She's of course very sweet and adores Mephiles the way the game chao who are bonded with a specific character do; but she's also independent enough to get very annoyed with him if she thinks he's being too stubborn/angry/a jackass, and makes her opinions known. She's very manipulative with this — she takes after her handler — but at least she uses that power for good more often than not.

She's also a bit birdish in nature, so she has a few quirks, like loving shiny things and eating the occasional small animal.

As far as what she does to help Meph out, it's quite varied, between categories of physical, mental, and magical.

If he's in a weakened state² which makes him very stiff (call that magic turbo arthritis) then she can help him with things like fetching objects; using finer motor skills; being a living hot water bottle (this is a thing real animals have been bred for and I think that's cool); and on the occasion where he might have been floored by someone or exhausted himself or something like that, she can help him get up. She's a very sturdy half power type³, taller on her toes, and Meph weighs approximately three tangerines, so it's not hard for her to prop him up or pull him a bit.

More subtlely, she also helps keep his social venom in check, by doing anything from poking to biting him if his figurative magical blood pressure gets too high. Or if he's lying for no good reason. Or if he's just being a jerk. He'd get into way more fights if she wasn't there; to the point that honestly his only hope of success in anything involving the cooperation of the other 06-present characters is pretty dependent on her moderation and grounding. It also doesn't hurt that people are a bit more willing to give the benefit of the doubt to someone who has a chao that obviously trusts them.

Plus she's just the first real positive force in his life in well over 200 years, so she's definitely doing a lot to make him slightly less insane just by being present. Can't be too reckless and destructive if you have a kid/pet to think of.

And lastly she makes it way easier to handle chaos energy in the kinds and amounts he needs to sometimes, since here chao are pretty much beings of chaos energy, and can use it and store it. Her being able to stash the kinds of chaos energy he can't comes in handy quite a bit.

Of course she's getting plenty from the relationship, too. Firstly, Solaris had a chao himself at one point, and knew plenty of others, so Mephiles is well aquainted with the care of chao and isn't about to let anything bad happen to one if he can help it. Secondly, chao also get enrichment from exposure to chaos energy hotspots, and Mephiles *is* a chaos energy hotspot; so she gets a lot of ambient energy just by being around him, and later from dealings with Iblis. Lastly, Meph's a total pushover for her, so she can get her way pretty much any time she wants. It's a pretty good deal in exchange for playing fetch, being an emotional support animal, and occasionally needing to keep her spikey dummy from falling off of something👍

With the Supers/Emeralds in general, there's a toonnnnn of stuff going on with them here. Too much to write down in one spot; but I can try to get the basics down.

The meta level preamble; I was a kid when I decided on a lot of how this worked, so I disregard most canon after 06; so no 'the chaos emeralds are alien' stuff.

Instead, they're all more like forces of nature condensed; with the Chaos Emeralds as sort of extensions or aspects of their respective Supers, and the Master as the 'Master' of the Supers, and by extension the Chaos Emeralds. The Master is their originator, and on the rare occasion it deigns to interfere, their shepherd⁴. Typically the Supers' main (Emerald) forms are supposed to be on display in the Hidden Palace with the Master Emerald, though they did scatter into other areas and special zones after the Chaos⁵/Knuckles Clan incident, and only came back when summoned by the Chaos Emeralds in S3/K.

They all have their own quirks and different ways they work, but some things are consistent. None of the Chaos Emeralds or the Master Emerald have much in the way of persona, although they all do 'think' to an extent, and make decisions in the canonical nebulous way. Most of the Supers, however, are pretty much full-blown Creature status; although they run a range of how people-like they want to be. Gold is the closest to people — to what some consider a problematic degree — while Green in the furthest, and is only a bit more of an entity than the Master.

The Supers main associations are in natural phenomena, but they also have more abstract aspects, and even more abstract abstract aspects; including their own anti-aspects. The basics, though, are these⁶:

Green -- Life (Death/Lifelessness)

Cyan -- Water (Deluge/Drought)

Blue -- Wind (Gales/Doldrums)

Purple -- Sky (Presence/Void)

Red -- Earth (Grand Scale/Small Scale)

White -- Mind (Consciousness/Obscurity)

Gold -- Light (Burning/Absence of light)

Three of these guys are canon characters already. Perhaps Gold's identity is a bit obvious :P

¹ There's a whole Can Of Worms I have about explaining why sometimes the chao we see in game are more like pets, yet there's also chao that talk and have jobs and stuff; basic answer is chao keep leveling up in sapience depending on a bunch of factors, but especially how long they've been around/how much they've evolved.

² Variable depending on how much he's exerted himself; when he last rested; the time of day; the temperature; if someone just punched him in the face; lots of things.

³ In game logic she'd be considered a 'Solaris chao'; adjacent to Chaos chao. Obtainment would be the same process, except with high stats in power/flying instead of balanced, and a required hero alignment. For funsies I'd also make it so doing the same thing but with dark and neutral alignment got you Mephiles and Iblis chao respectively.

⁴ It's hyperbolic and not just a little tongue-in-cheek, but some of the Supers in the modern day refer to the Master as 'Mother' (and the others as siblings); which is kind of funny, since even the Supers — as eldritch beings — consider the Master Emerald an eldritch being. Their mama; the inscrutable cosmic entity(/maybe horror)

⁵ The Supers would probably think it's weird that Chaos is called the same thing as the Chaos Emeralds and the energy they all use. Here it's probably a mistranslation from something more like 'Change', and it's only in modern day that Chaos the character is called Chaos.

⁶ Unless I change them. I'm still hemming and hawing the wording and the secondary aspects for some.

Wow, did you really read all that? Damn! Thank you very much! I owe you... Actually managing to get something drawn sometimes ^.^'

Edit: Do I need to tag askers?? Legit don't remember. To be safe: @dyke-mecha

[frostbite-au]

It's 3 AM

I have produced no meaningful work in like a month.

But I do now, for some reason, have worked out some of Silver's stuff specifically. Relevantly, that after 06 'bad future' Silver is stuck in the 'present' because his timeline got put into the cosmic compost bin; but at least he still has Blaze, who is also stuck in this universe in the 'present', as she is a dimensional/temporal anomaly and that whole sealing Iblis shenanigan lasted approximately 0.5 seconds until the Spikey Idiot Triad threw a grenade at space/time and rubber-banded her to the designated 'present'. These two still being around is fairly Problematic if you're a half-God trying to dodge 'heroes' and paradoxes so you can fix the rest of the spaghetti code that is space/time after 06.

Less relevant to anything is the various shenanigans taking place 200 years later, where 'bad future' Silver is still alive (medium length story there) when 'fixed future' Silver is born, and is kinda sorta his own uncle-in-law, which no one predicted in that entire time span; so it's a bit of a surprise realization for everyone who was there for 06.

"The baby's quills are coming in nicely already."

"Yes; although the color is unexpected."

"Mhm; they're almost sil-- Holy shit."

[frostbite-au]

Dusty Desert is based on Persepolis and Solaris is present in the ruin imagery, thus Solaris/Iblis/Mephiles are Persian, and I take this to mean the western european-coded modern Soleannan 'royal family' are colonizers who usurped the kingdom and stole their God both figuratively in the co-opty way christians took figures like Easter (a pagan god) and literally by imprisoning Solaris and later experimenting on him/torturing him until he broke in two. In this 666 page essay, I will --

[frostbite-au]

Dump of whatever random doodles on my phone involve Solaris; I don't remember what I've posted or not and I'm too lazy to check.

This guy is like a science experiment to me and I'm sure he wouldn't appreciate that.

Some words and extra doodle or two under the cut

Basic context: I got an AU (Frostbite) where 06 is as canon-compliant (up to and through 06) as possible except I fix shit afterwards and give my own spin on some character motivations. Most stuff is just worldbuilding though. These are a tiny fraction of my Solaris stuff but I don't put much on my phone/don't post much.

Anyway brief descriptions:

1. To me Solaris is a 'sibling' of sorts to Chaos, and also has 8 forms. This is a concept for Solaris 6; essentially a Persian Simurgh. 'Perfect Solaris' would be different from the boss fight we see, although similar; the boss fight Solaris is pretty god-equivalent-to-sick and is also too busy trying to deal with fixing Time to make himself 'presentable'.

2. His design is still changing a bit, but a kind of 'mobian' version of him. One more like how I normally do things, one more Sonic-y. I do not like the Sonic-y one. Nowadays Solaris 0 is more in the middle leaning Sonic, and Solaris 1 is a bit beastier but still close to the other one.

3. After Solaris is allowed to Solaris he might occaaaasionally go hedgehog for a bit; he was one for ~211 years so he's used to it. Gonna be cunty about it though, cause he's just like that. Shadow and Sonic look a bit young (if linear progression of time applies and we say Sonic is ~14 or so for Adventure, then for me that'd mean he's at least 16 for 06, and this couldn't take place until like 2 years later so I guess he'd be a whole-ass adult by then) but maybe they're the kind of people who just have baby-faces idk

Anyway some rougher stuff that's either real early practice or I'm hemming and hawwing over making 'canon' to the AU

[frostbite-au]

Giving the scrungles chao saga

Mephiles's? Sweet babyangel service chao; if they did races Meph would definitely be dancemom manipulative of the other chao handlers just to make them fight, with the chao being none the wiser.

Metal's starts off as a feral little shit that loves to bite; but biting is not very effective on Metal, so oops bro, looks like you have been government assigned a chao (Who eventually warms up to him with the correct combination of ignoring their shenanigans and manhandling them into being socialized. No, we are having a nice day at the beach, you may not go and bite small children)

The third one is for an unpictured different Metal. This one was a rescue and is very shy, but their mommy is very scary with a resting murder face which gives them some more confidence as they grow up. Anyone who messes with this chao would wind up mysteriously missing.

If these were in the game...

Meph's chao would operate like a chaos chao, except it needs higher stats in power and flight.

Metal chao 1 would be neutral/speed/flight with a disproportionate amount of kangaroos and/or bug animals givin to it.

Metal chao 2 would be dark/power/flying, raised primarily on drives and dragons.

[frostbite-au]

Quick proof of concept thing for my bodyhorror babyboy (Mephiles)

[frostbite-au]

A dump of some Mephiles concept sketches for my Frostbite AU

No context unless asked for; I am autistic and have too much to say about it.

[frostbite-au]

I am presently ill over the cartoon hedgehogs.

I have no experience with running an active/AU blog, but I've done enough at this point to warrant compiling it.

I'd be honored to have asks; I might even do them ask-blog-style from time to time. I just wanna talk about my dumb lore.

AU elevator pitch: Sonic and co. don't manage a perma-kill on Solaris, instead splitting him apart once again, unbeknownst to them. Mephiles eventually wakes up and -- his suffering long and his work never finished -- restarts his quest to fix both himself and the entire timeline.

Features Solaris apologism; Mephiles is disabled and has a service chao to assist; Metal's here too; some Blaze screen time; there's more worldbuilding than narrative tbh; the Super Emeralds are distinct entities; modern Soleanna is a european-esque colonialist state built over a razed Persian-esque society and they won't keep getting away with it if I have any say in it

AU considerations: mild violence, mild psychological horror, mild body horror, mild gore, mild mature themes, but no adult content. No shipping planned, but *maybe*. We'll see. Semi canon-compliant up to 06.