TheKian's Geneforge Lore Thread (Spoilers!)

[TheKian]

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the wondrous world of Geneforge. If you'd like to learn about the world without having to play through the game and learn everything, or without having to piece together stuff from all the different threads on here, this should prove fairly useful to you. However, SPOILERS! ALL THE SPOILERS! LITERALLY EVERY SPOILER OF WHICH I CAN THINK! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Geneforge (GF1):

Welcome to Sucia Island, a Shaper research facility abandoned some two centuries ago. It is here that the problems in the world started, in more ways than just one. Sucia Island was an enormous research facility, industry, and school all in one. In its mines remain machines that can create powerful tools out of raw materials in but a moment. At one end, near one its three huge docks, lies the remains of a school. In the remainder of the island are crypts, holding cells, administrative centers, and most importantly... the location of the Geneforge. It all starts with the discovery of the gene. Shaper scientists had discovered the existence of a 'tiny scroll' in your body that holds the information to its entire structure. No longer would Shapers have to experimentally mutate creations to make them better. Now, all they had to do was figure out the corresponding code to do something, and make it so. However, they began to go too far. The Shapers discovered how to 'safely' reShape themselves, and give themselves powers in a single moment. Though this began to concern Shapers on the mainland of the 2 only continents, they only truly began to address their concerns upon the near-completion of the Geneforge, a tool that could give a person enormous, godlike powers in a short moment. All Shapers were recalled from the island with great haste, leaving behind many of their augmentation canisters, tools, waste, and most importantly... all of their serviles. Those that survived formed three distinct factions. The most pliable and docile Serviles - to Shapers, at least - were the Obeyers, loyal to the Shapers to the bitter end. They cruelly used their resources in Pentil, a former Shaper fort, to repress the other villages as best as possible. Their neighbors were the Awakened, who did not wish to serve the Shapers any longer, but wanted to deal with them as equals. They inhabited Vakkiri, in the southwest corner of the island. The poor, doomed "Takers of Free", known best as the Takers, inhabited Kazg, the former administrative center of the island. The Takers grew to hate the Shapers as a result of waste in the South Workshop poisoning them and their land.

 

One day, everything changed. Outsiders landed on this barred island, outsiders from a distant continent far across the sea. They learned the secrets of Shapers, gaining great powers from the canisters. There, on Sucia, they discovered the Geneforge. Trajkov, their leader, decided that they needed a Shaper to unlock its power. The Shaper he selected was a man named Goettsch, someone about as charming as Sage Taygen. Goettsh gained Trajkov's confidence, then stole the shaping gloves needed to unlock the Geneforge's power and fled. An already formidable Shaper, he used all the canisters he could find, eventually causing a great stalemate between the two factions: rogue Shaper and Sholai. Trajkov decided that, though he still needed a Shaper, a different kind would be needed to unlock the power of the Geneforge. An apprentice Shaper. And so the player enters this situation, stranded on the island by an attack by the Sholai's last remaining ship. The player would wander the island, seeing the serviles. Perhaps he would kill them, perhaps he would help them. In his explorations of the island, this apprentice gained great powers from the canisters, and discovered a MASSIVE SPOILER about Sucia. This island was, indeed, the birthplace of the Shapers. Through uncontrolled use of Shaping to kill their enemies, the Shapers accidentally created monstrosities and diseases that drove them from Sucia for centuries. The apprentice, feeling some kind of loyalty to the Shapers or something who knows killed Trajkov, killed Goettsch, and escaped Sucia to land in Dillame, warning the Shapers about what had happened. They were impressed by this apprentice, and sent him off to his training while they burned Sucia Island to the ground. This Shaper became a famous and important traveling Shaper who eventually dropped off the face of the world since it was too hard to put him in later games.

 

Geneforge 2:

And now welcome to the Drypeak Mountains, a place that appears to be even more boring than the state of Montana. This massive desert is the combined result of a failure of Shapers to bring life to it and the failure of Zakary to not be a piece of-

However, when an Agent, Shanti, and an apprentice assigned to her show up to take stock of the miserable failure of Drypeak, it becomes clear that all is not how it seems. Zakary, the Shaper in charge of the settlement of Drypeak, gives some unconvincing lies to the representatives of the Shaper council that almost make it seem as though he wants them to intervene. After a short period of investigation, Shanti is kidnapped by Barzahl's agents, the other Shaper who had come to Drypeak, and the apprentice finds that the claims of Drypeak's failure were a complete lie. The Shapers had, using knowledge stolen from Sucia Island during its purge, filled a hidden valley with life and brought elements of the Awakened, as well as some drayks from Sucia, with them. A few dozen Shaper apprentices had accompanied Zakary and Barzahl, and had split between the two as both diverged into two factions: wimpy loyalists of Zakary, and insane canister addicts of Barzahl. Meanwhile, the creations had once again split among familiar lines, with drayks and the newly created drakons fomenting war against the Shapers, and the Awakened being naive fools. Unfortunately for basically everyone present, the Shaper apprentice, whatever his misgivings about the absolute rule of the Shapers, remained loyal and reported back to the Shaper council. The response was immediate and ruthless. ALL TEH SHAPERS KILL EVER ONE. Massive armies, including one psychopathic... apprentice... named Litalia came to burn everything. The Takers pretty much all died. The Awakened pretty much all died. The Barzites all died. Zakary probably also died, but nobody missed him. Some elements survived, namely the greatest creation ever shaped, and this by another Drakon. For behind a sealed door in the mountain complex of Gazak-Uss was Eass' greatest creation: Ghaldring.

 

TO BE CONTINUED

Edited May 20, 2017 by TheKian

[TheKian]

Geneforge 3: Enter the crazy psychopath.

 

Sometime around the events of Geneforge 2, a particularly psychopathic and insane apprentice wiped out huge groups of innocent serviles. And there was also Litalia, but you were way worse.

 

Litalia was a Shaper apprentice sent to destroy rogue serviles. The laxity of the Shapers in the settlement had allowed the serviles to grow rebellious, and Litalia went to burn them to ashes and shaped a bunch of new serviles to replace them. Being a pathological liar, she later claimed she was an important figure in the events of the Drypeaks. She wasn't. Having done her first annihilation of rogues (the first one is always the hardest), she went mad from regret, attacked her Shaper handler, and ran off. Eventually, she met Ghaldring, the final creation of Easss, who swayed her to his side to join his rebellion. From there on, this already psychopathic Shaper apprentice became a canister addict and eventually was so insanely powerful that she was ready to go and attack the Shapers. Location? Greenwood Academy, Ashen Isles.

 

A Shaper apprentice woke up to the sound of the entire academy shaking around him. Not natural tremors; the academy was under attack. After fighting his way to the exit of the academy, the apprentice was immediately KO'd (in effect) by Litalia, who then took a minute to brag and tells him 'toodleloo'. Following this, the apprentice cleared out Greenwood Island of the rogues left behind by Litalia, learning of the abominations of Shaping created by her and her allies. Having nothing left to do, the apprentice moved on to other islands. Accompanying the Shaper were two other apprentices: Alwan, a young, loyal Guardian badly lacking self-confidence, and Greta, a former Agent apprentice who was kicked out for her softness toward creations. The Shaper apprentice, leading the two, eventually found himself sympathizing with the rebels, and eventually found himself blatantly assisting them, repairing a warped creator left behind on the capital of the Ashen Isles by Litalia. The young Shaper, finally abandoned in disgust by Alwan for having turned on the Shapers, fought his way to the Isle of Spears, where the Drakons were preparing yet another Geneforge to give themselves ridiculous amounts of power. The Shaper apprentice pledged himself to the rebels, and returned to Dhonal's Island to kill Lord Rahul, securing victory for the rebels. As the flames of war swept across Terrestia, the young Shaper apprentice, possessed now of awesome power, reShaped by the Drakons into a being of true glory, just fell out of the world. Although, of course, there's always Shaper Monarch... in Geneforge 4.

 

TO BE CONTINUED MORE

Edited May 29, 2017 by TheKian

[TheKian]

Shaper Lore:

 

The Shapers are a powerful sect of wizards which uses magic to create life, with the aid of a magical biological slurry called 'essence'. The Shapers create an established creation form and bombard it with different kinds of magical energy (read: radiation) that causes them to mutate. If a specific mutation is helpful, the Shapers record how they did it and continue improving the creation further. Essentially, they perform magical genetic engineering. The Shapers, running the government, forbid anyone else from learning how to Shape, on the penalty of death. Shaper society is essentially divided into three different roles:

 

Shapers, the eponymous group of the sect, are researchers. They are exceptionally skilled at the creation of life, and are usually also highly skilled magicians. If they aren't dedicated creation researchers, slaving away to develop new strains of creations, they typically administer a town or travel about, aiding the poor civilians. As one can expect from the rebellion, the last of these possibilities wasn't too prevalent.

 

Guardians are warriors and leaders. Typically, they act as generals and captains, and may be used as leaders of fortifications in particularly important areas: for example, Guardian Makar in Kratoa-Kel, one of the two primary passes between northwest and southwest Terrestia. Though they are often skilled at Shaping, their primary skills lie in their combat prowess; a combination of both allows a single Guardian to act as a one-man army.

 

Agents are the assassins and 'diplomats' of the Shaper council. If there is a problem the Shaper council wants immediately resolved, an Agent is typically dispatched. Agents are most highly skilled in combat, primarily magic. They, being important stealth assets, tend to use few or no creations, and make targeted strikes against enemies, instead of going into all-out war as a Guardian or even a Shaper may. Their less exciting duties include checking up on colonies around Terrestia to make sure that nothing illegal is going on.

 

 

The Sholai:

 

In the original Geneforge, a Shaper apprentice finds that a people from a distant land have landed on a barred Shaper research facility. These people were the Sholai, brave, seafaring Russians (or something like that). They come from across the eastern sea, one that the Shapers typically regarded as being impassible. Though they do have magical skills of their own, they had not heard of Shaping prior to landing on Sucia Island. Not much is known about their society, but it is believed by some that they have an empire which could rival the Shapers' own in size, given that the Sholai do, indeed, have magic as well. Their technology is similar to that of the outsiders, with the exception of a complete lack of Shaped tools - living tools, batons, and the like. They have fairly advanced ships, probably similar to those of the Renaissance era in Europe, and have and otherwise similar technological level to real life.