Oni2:Slaves of War/Polylectiloquy

A proposal for an Oni 2

Not so much of a story as a setting, at this point at least.

Framed as a Q&A with multiple possible answers to some Qs, when I can't make up my mind or want to see how a certain idea sounds when I write it out.

(bold indicates an answer has been decided upon)

How far after Oni should Oni 2 be?

Long enough that the "new world" is shaping up (a few to several years), so things aren't too chaotic and we can begin to see what direction society is headed in, in answer to the question left hanging at the end of Oni.

What happened to the WCG?

It's fractured. When the worldwide network of ACCs falls, the main question is, "How quickly can we restore or build new ACCs?" Because this is an extremely costly project, the areas which formerly made up each sovereign nation, each with their own national identity, entered a "me first" state of mind. Why should their people's tax money be used to pay for ACCs somewhere else? Any nation unsure that it had enough of the WCG's attention was bound to break off from the world government and start hoarding resources. Like World War I resulted from the germ of chaos in the Balkans, the nations that defected first caused a chain reaction of defections and new alliances that took down the WCG almost overnight (on a political time scale).

Even though each nation is prepared to stab the other in the back, they are still forming coalitions. Nobody wants to be the one country that's left after everyone else has picked a side. The natural result is that the political situation is restored to how it was before unification by the WCG. What was that situation, exactly? I can think of no better extrapolation of today's politics than the situation that was described in Gundam 00. Admittedly, Gundam 00 takes place 300 years in our future, and Oni is more like 30 years in the future. Also, the main reason for Gundam 00's prediction of north-south power consolidation was the development of the orbital elevators, which would ideally be placed near the equator, thus requiring some measure of cooperation between hemispheres. However, orbital elevators would be a long way off in Oni's future — even if it shouldn't take us 300 years to make them, the world of Oni is suffering from the BioCrisis, so I don't think they're very concerned with the "final frontier" right now. Here are where some of the nations of the world lie in Gundam's version of 2307 A.D.:

• Union of Solar Energy and Free Nations
  • North America
  • Japan
  • South and Central America
  • Australasia

• Human Reform League
  • China & Mongolia
  • Siberian Russia
  • Ceylon
  • India
  • ASEAN
  • Korea
  • Taiwan
  • Papua New Guinea

• Advanced European Union
  • Mainland Europe
  • United Kingdom
  • Iceland & Greenland
  • European Russia
  • Turkey
  • Palestine
  • Africa has no member states but African land is used by the AEU for their orbital elevator

Some notable nations missing from the above list: Israel (surely this would be in the Union with America?), and Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan and the Middle East. The Middle East in Gundam 00 has lost all its power due to the exhaustion of the oil supply, and has descended into rank poverty; the question we might have to answer is, would this already have happened by Oni's time or not? Finally, the whole continent of Africa is without representation, although this is hardly surprising from a historical perspective.

In any case, this world situation is the farthest thing from stable. It's entirely possible that the blocs will be going to war with each other, or even within themselves as they jockey for position, finally leading to a third world war.

What happened to the TCTF?

As a law enforcement arm of the erstwhile WCG, the TCTF as a pan-national agency is naturally no longer in existence. The actual personnel are still working in regional branches for their own governments.

What is Griffin up to?

Despite the global fragmentation at the time of Oni 2, Griffin has been placed in charge of a new, trans-national agency called Agency RED. Supposedly this name is not an acronym, but simply describes an agency dedicated to solving the highest (red-level) threats to international security, i.e., terrorism. In truth, the agency only has one mission, and what "RED" really stands for is "Restrain or Eliminate Daodan". The term "Daodan" is not public knowledge, and this acronymic expansion will not be found in writing in even the most classified documents in the offices of the world's governments. Why Griffin would be placed in this important position when he was directly responsible for the creation of one of the prime Daodan symbiotes, as well as the actual source of his group's funding, is known by very few people in the world.

Those behind the agency consider the Daodan to be the most dangerous force in the world, and Griffin wholeheartedly agrees. Their basic goal is to try to keep Pandora's Box from opening all the way, before something causes the world to completely descend into chaos. Agency RED's short-term mission is to track down new symbiotes and capture them, or kill them if they cannot be captured. The long-term mission of Agency RED is to find a "cure" for the Daodan threat, that is, some means of neutralizing or killing the Chrysalis. To that end, they are seeking a certain old scientist by the name of Hasegawa, who went missing some years ago....

What happened to the Syndicate?

Broken into pieces by infighting and panic over Cataclysm; some of them are supplying arms to the nations as they rebuild their militaries in preparation for a possible World War III. One piece (Muro's surviving cronies) has the data on use of the Chrysalis, and is trying to sell Daodan-powered super-soldiers to some unscrupulous country as a private militia (of course they won't actually share the data on how to produce Daodan symbiotes). This might even give them the edge they need to become the main branch of the Neo-Syndicate. They might use their private army to seize control over a whole nation or two. Heh. Syndicastan.

How many ACCs were there, and how many broken?

As far as we can tell, there were 417. How many were destroyed? Konoko makes it sound like all of them blew up when she sent that leet haxor random key-mashing signal out from Muro's base. However, that quote doesn't explicitly say that it was all of them. A more interesting answer for Oni 2's purposes is to say that some ACCs are still working or were easily repaired (besides, this isn't a Michael Bay film, not everything has to blow up). If most of one country's ACCs go offline, and the neighbor country has more working ACCs, you have a recipe for a burgeoning World War III.

How bad is the pollution and how is the world dealing with it?

Well, the tragedy of Jamie Kerr tells us that it's going to be deadly to live anywhere near those plants, and even when the ACCs were protecting the cities, the area outside the cities was the location of a desperate, possibly losing, battle against the Wilderness. So the hostile flora are going to spread with a vengeance. Some people may try to burn back the growth a la Nausicaa, and eke out an existence. Many others will flee the areas that are no longer protected by ACCs. They would of course migrate to areas with working ACCs, and there would be a crush of immigrants; lots of fighting and ugliness.

Does the general public get Chrysalises? How does society change?

It seems unlikely, as noted above under "What is Griffin up to?", that the governments would be okay with the general public having alien lifeforms in them, especially since the best-known Daodan host would be the anarchist Muro. So, if anything, only higher-ups and the rich will obtain Chrysalises, either legally or illegally.

Besides the occasional purchase of a Chrysalis on the black market, the main solution for the BioCrisis will be the building of new ACCs. And that process is not going to be quick, that's for darn sure. Inevitably large areas where nations are poorer will get neglected. Most of Africa would die for sure; they may have originally received support from the U.S. and Europe to build the first bunch of ACCs, but when each nation has to look out for itself, Africa will be on its own. The overpopulated nations like India and China would suffer the greatest losses in population, but then again, they're probably going to be seriously industrialized well before then, and will have plenty of labor to build new ACCs with. Smaller and less-developed nations will definitely take it on the chin, assuming they didn't already when the BioCrisis first started.

Where do the Chrysalises come from?
This is the elephant in the room, isn't it? Oni never tells us. But one option seems so likely that it blots out all others in my mind:

The Wilderness. Normally the Daodan lifeform is nonsentient and lethal, like the plant that killed Jamie, but when grown with human DNA in them, they become accustomed to it and can eventually be safely implanted in a human.

But what do they look like, and what do they do out there? They could just be some flower or something, but it would be more interesting if they were more significant to the altered Wilderness, like the tree in Nausicaa (not to beat a parallel into the ground).

When I say "like the plant that killed Jamie", I'm not necessarily saying that very plant was the Daodan, but if it was, it sure would explain how Hasegawa discovered the Chrysalis. He was a logical man. Even in his grief, he might have thought to take a sample of the plant with him back to a lab, where he could analyze it and find an antidote so no one would ever die again. He would have found that the plant resisted all hostile pathogens, developing immunity almost instantly. This would have started his Daodan Project. (Cf. this image of the infected Jamie, who is displaying colored veins similar to the Imago effect seen in Muro and Barabas.) Eventually, Hasegawa found a way to introduce the Chrysalis, wherever it came from, into Muro, but only after much study and in a controlled environment. So even if that "flowering shrub" (as described in this clipping) was the plant that yields the Chrysalis, it could be that the haphazard introduction into Jamie's body was too much for her to survive like Muro later would. Then again, she died by Hasegawa's gun, so we don't strictly know what would have become of her had that been the Daodan organism infecting her. Based on what we see later in the game, even if Hasegawa was mistaken in thinking she was going to die, he probably still inadvertently made a merciful decision by ending her life before the Daodan did what it was trying to do.

What ever happened to Dr. Hasegawa?

Naturally, he's continuing his research into the Daodan. After all, his work wasn't done when the Syndicate raided his lab and he was separated from Kerr and Konoko. What was left for him to do? Well, obviously he ended up implanting Muro with a Chrysalis (forced to by the Syndicate, or did he choose to?), so much of his time would have been spent studying the progress of the Chrysalis, the same kind of work that Kerr was doing on the TCTF side. Perhaps after seeing just how powerful and uncontrollable Muro became as an Imago, he realized that his technology needed some means of being controlled. His goal was to save people from the pollution, not to create a race of monsters.

By the time of Oni 2, Prof. Hasegawa has escaped from the Syndicate and gone into hiding from the world. He's discovered that the best place to hide is in the middle of the Wilderness, where he uses his advanced understanding of the foreign plant life to survive where others could not. Perhaps he has a little blonde-haired "daughter" who looks strangely familiar… (I would love this angle, but I hope no one accuses me of ripping off Gendo Ikari). Part of the story of Oni 2 will involve finding him and learning what he knows about controlling his creation.

What was up with that Bertram Navarre guy?

Could he be in league with Hasegawa for some reason? Or is he still working under the Syndicate on his own amoral human experiments? The more interesting choice would be if Navarre had some reason to work with Hasegawa (a fact that Hasegawa perhaps keeps from Mai when they meet), because Hasegawa already has a history of putting his science before strictly moral considerations (e.g., working for the Syndicate).

Did Muro actually die?

If not, then he almost automatically would be the villain in Oni 2. He seems past redeeming. At the least, if there's a new big bad dude in town, he will join up with this new guy, all the while planning to overthrow him. But if he doesn't succeed in overthrowing the boss by the end of the game, it makes him seem weak compared to his old self.

If that's the case, we may want him out of the way so we can tread new ground. There seems to be little depth that could be built into his character without retconning and making him out to be somehow well-meaning, which seems lame.

Did Barabas or Mukade die? Either could simply have been KOed. We're not told.

A. "Yes" to Barabas, "No" to Mukade could explain the major Daodan spike after beating Barabas but none after beating Mukade. (Assuming killing leads to a Daodan spike, which Mukade himself indicated it did. This hypothesis would also mean that Muro is definitely dead.)

B. "Yes" to both, and the difference in reaction was that Barabas was semi-Imago and Mukade was not.

But Mukade would have to be semi-Imago to have those powers. So this is not an option.

C. "No" to Barabas and "Yes" to Mukade isn't desirable simply because Mukade is so much more interesting than Barabas that it is unfair to give us more Barabas and no Mukade in a sequel.

D. "No" to both. The difference in reaction could also be that Barabas was a Daodan host and Mukade was an experiment of Navarre's (but then why does Mukade indicate he and Mai are the same and they both are being replaced by something inside them?). I just don't know what to do with Barabas, but I would love to see Mukade out of armor, as a new man. Whoever he is….

E. "Don't know" to both. The difference may have nothing to do with who dies and who doesn't. After all, does the (presumably non-sentient) Daodan organism inside Mai know when someone is killed? Perhaps it would, if there was a release of some energy when another Daodan host died, but let's assume that it doesn't know, and see where that leads us. If it doesn't know, then the occurrence of a major spike has more to do with Mai's mental/physical state at the time. It could be pointed out that all three of the "triggers" for the major spikes are the defeat of someone who has something to do with Shinatama. Barabas has just kidnapped her when Mai defeats him, the room of baddies at the end of Chapter 7 are guarding Shinatama/keeping her from Mai, and Muro was the one who tortured Shinatama personally.

I made some interesting points with E above, but I still favor A, because it sets me up for the kind of Oni 2 that I want to write, one where Muro and Barabas are gone and Mukade still lives, and the explanation is a simple one (using E's back-pedaling disclaimer that the Daodan, even if non-sentient, could still detect and react to the death of a host by sensing a release of energy, or a cessation of life of another Daodan organism nearby, therefore, no reaction to Mukade's defeat means he still lives).

Who really was/is Mukade?

A. Straight, boring answer is that he was a ninja, experimentally modified by a Chrysalis. This isn't necessarily a bad answer, as if we want him to live, he can still be alive in Oni 2 and we can build on his character. It's only really boring if he died in Oni.

B. More interesting answer is that he's related to Mai somehow. Since we don't know what happened to her dad, he could be Daddy.

1. But that seems kind of clichéd, and since when did he turn from professor to master ninja?

2. What if he is a genetic clone of dear old dad, but one gone horribly wrong? The clone was made to serve as a body for a Chrysalis, but was unstable. This would explain Mukade's fatalistic ready-to-die-when-the-Chrysalis-takes-over attitude in Oni.

3. He might be Bertram Navarre. One can still ask how a scientist becomes a ninja, but we don't know Navarre at all, so if we want to write him as an athletic guy, or say that he built a suit to help him fight, we can. This would also explain why he doesn't give Konoko a Daodan surge when he is defeated, if he was Navarre or a product of Navarre's own non-Daodan experiments. But he indicates to Konoko in their encounter that they are both Daodan hosts, so this is probably a no-go.

C. He could be an artificial being. Hasn't anybody noticed? Of course, this raises whether he's an SLD and who built him...

1. He's a robot built by the Syndicate. Easy answer, but doesn't explain his cryptic talk.

2. He's a robot built by the TCTF as either a plant in the Syndicate or a precaution against Konoko. How he managed to hire Ninjas is a mystery, although he could have simply evaded them as enemies.

3. He's an SLD based off Muro's mind and modified for combat. Again, simple, straightforward, and would explain a whole lot.

4. He's an SLD based off Hasegawa's mind. This provides a logical explanation for his actions, although attacking his daughter would seem a bit off-base.

5. He's an SLD based off Konoko's mind. Who has access to those engrams? Griffin. And he would want a quick-acting, fast termination in case Mai ever went rogue. Shinatama as a defense module would only go so far, after all, so he made and constantly updated a fighter SLD behind the backs of everyone. Of course, this again brings up the whole "How'd he get past the ninjas?" but it could be assumed that if the ninjas were artificial, as some speculate, he could have just hacked into their minds and made himself invisible to them.

If still alive, what is Mukade doing?

A. He might still be evil, but it seems like he would have self-destructed by now. That kind of personality couldn't last for years without mellowing. If still evil, he probably is running a branch of the disjointed Syndicate.

B. He might have totally turned around after being broken at Konoko's hands. He doesn't even hold a grudge against her. He has resigned himself to serving the people by alternating Daodan harvesting and experimenting with Neo-Agriculture. He is likely to want to avoid fighting so it doesn't bring back his 'bad tendencies'.

What would Mai be doing as the Cataclysm happened?

She and Griffin are the only ones we know of with the knowledge to work with Chrysalises. Well, the Syndicate might have Muro's data. Anyway, if we assume her views remain the same from the ending of Oni, Mai would be helping people get them, but not in a Florence Nightingale way; she's no doting nurse. She'd be wherever there's a fight over collecting Daodans from the Wilderness or quelling international issues one hotspot at a time.

She might also have issues about her choices at the end of Oni.

She definitely won't go by the name "Konoko" anymore, I think everyone can agree on that.

Does Mai end up going Imago, at least by the time of Oni 2?

A. Option 1 is that for some reason she doesn't, but the only way I can think of that it wouldn't happen is if she stopped fighting, and that seems unlikely.

B. Option 2 is that she does, but she can un-transform too, so normally she resembles the Mai we knew. This is definitely the option that is most in line with animé tradition.

C. Option 3 is that she is permanently transformed. So how does this affect her? It depends on what she looks like, right?

1. Either she's hideous and she hides her visage like Mukade…

2. Or she's not that different-looking, and goes around like normal. If she transforms like my sketch indicates (need to upload), then she could mask that transformation with sunglasses and a facial mask, like synthetic skin, that makes it look normal-colored.

This option, C2, sets us up for a traditional animé-style revelation. At first we're told that she never transformed, for some unknown reason. Then, somewhere (probably early) in the game, Mai meets an adversary who's too strong for her -- or so it seems. Maybe he smashes her in the face, hard, and she hits a wall, and slumps to the ground. Her sunglasses fall off, and clatter on the ground. Meanwhile, your health is getting critical. Then she slowly stands up, face lowered, and says, "That hurt." She reaches up to her face, which seems to have torn skin hanging from it, and pulls it all off, then looks up, and we see her true, transformed face, with its real skin and her altered eyes. Suddenly she starts to glow with a Daodan overpower aura, and her health is fully restored, and now the bad guy is no match for her. She then can use this form (perhaps sparingly) throughout the rest of the game, now that it's revealed that she transformed a while ago and normally holds back in a fight, to keep her secret.

Isn't a fully-developed Mai going to be too powerful to make the game challenging?

A. Play ZOE 2 before you ask that question. You're massively more powerful at the end than you were at the start of ZOE, wasting dozens of enemies with each attack. But the game's still challenging. The key is just having tons of enemies or one very strong enemy.

B. She might not always be transformed or able to transform.

C. There's the amnesia option proposed elsewhere, but amnesia wouldn't remove her strength, only her skill. Still, having to re-learn fighting would make the game more challenging. But I am not a fan of a contrived "restart" that wants to drag a character back to where they were.

What would Oni 2 be about?

A. Well, it could be about more than one thing. I would like to see Mai trying to find her father. It should be for more than sentimental reasons, because those would seem trivial when the world is on fire. Perhaps she needs data only he has.

Certainly if she's looking for him, she has to find him. It would be a total tease not to reveal what he's been up to all this time. Maybe finding him is just the start of Act Two, as his work (assuming he's still doing any) sets a new plot in motion.

B. It could also be about a new development in the Wilderness….

C. Perhaps Man is trying to burn away the mutated Wilderness to re-establish a normal ecosphere and Mai feels this is not the right path.

D. Maybe the Neo-Syndicate is selling Chrysalises, and Mai and company are trying to prevent it.

E. Maybe someone has released a virus that can kill the Chrysalis. Particularly if the Chrysalises being sold are based on one set of genes to speed up production, this puts the entire implanted population at risk of death, or at least the removal of their protection from the Bio-Crisis.

Maybe, instead of killing the Chrysalis, it makes those implantees change somehow….