Post by Morph on Jan 7, 2008 12:48:01 GMT -5
The Idea
It all started many years ago, with a simple idea that a certain Mister Yamamoto had: to create a game, a world like the one he lived in, where everything was possible, and everything seemed as real as things were in the world he was born in. He was but a mere boy that time, but he started to make it reality when he had accomplished becoming a programmer and designer of video games. Though he did not focus on his great dream, it was always there, within the depths of his mind whilst he was building career, working for different video game companies. It wasn’t until a rough dozen years ago he started working on his great dream, after having talked with people he had worked with over the years, and who agreed to help him.
The Creation of a New World
As Yamamato and his colleagues worked on the virtual world, they faced many troubles. The equipment of their time was barely advanced enough to support a great virtual network that were as complex as the one envisioned in the trilogy The Matrix, from which some inspiration was drawn. Whilst in development, the project was named “Project Epsilon”.
It took at least nine months for a tiny, incredibly realistic virtual world to become reality, which was quite an accomplishment. A month or two later, they had created a way for one to insert one’s mind into the virtual world without having to bore into ones head, but their being was formless in the virtual world. As such, it was a month after that that the team that had been tasked with the creation of characters were able to form the first realistic virtual body for the mind of a user to implement itself into. Thus, a person could first walk around inside the new world, which the creators decided to codename “Genesis” for the time being.
For the next months after this had been accomplished, the Character Development Team focused on the creation of realistic-looking and –acting virtual NPCs. It took them a while, and failures were not uncommon. It took them a full twenty-five weeks to at last create one single NPC that was capable of acting human-like, and also looked like a human and moved and walked like a human, but with the incredible capabilities of the virtual world, this being was capable of more than a human could in the real world. They named this being “Arumon”.
After this was done, development took a jumpstart. The base for Arumon’s character was used for the creation of other NPCs. They would not act exactly the same, or look exactly the same, they would just act and look human. And where the programmers failed to make a good NPC, they didn’t throw away the data, but used it to create the beings that became known as the ‘monsters’ of Genesis, like the animals were to Earth, and meanwhile, the virtual world was also expanded. From a small, desert-like place, it was expanded to include houses for the NPC and other buildings, forests and rivers, lakes and swamps, plains and mountains, seas and islands, volcanoes and grassy fields, inhabited by both NPC and monster.
As the virtual world expanded and became more vast, with more areas being added and more kinds of inhabitants being created, the Staff created several key characters of the world of Ymaggion: the Balance Programs and the Elemental Guardians.
Whilst the Elemental Guardians proved to be a challenge in creating, they were little compared to the Balance Programs. The Dark Balance Program, codenamed ‘003’, proved to be one of the hardest of all to create. Whilst the Light Balance Program, codenamed ‘004’, which later came to be known under the name of Awai, was fairly easy to create, it took several tries for the Staff to create the right kind of character they wanted to have as the Dark Balance. In fact, it took them nine tries, and upon the ninth try, they used their data from the previous eight tries to create it, resulting in the artificial birth of Kuro Balance.
The Epsilon Beta
After the people who created the game deemed it finished, they released a Beta version of it, and asked several people to test it out, selecting people who would be drawn to the idea because they liked gaming, had lively imaginations, or because they would gain something by playing the game, which was the case with the Beta tester Hailin Bonnet, who had lost his leg, and who would – upon entering the new virtual world – get to experience the feeling of having two legs again. Others became part of the Beta testing crew for their own personal gain, personal gain in either the virtual world or the real one.
However, things went horribly, horribly wrong during the Beta test of the Epsilon Project. Because in it’s early stages, before even one Beta tester had entered the virtual world, the servers of the corporation that had worked to create that world experienced a major crash, leaving the virtual world online, but with no connection between it and the real world. It was during these few minutes that the only successful Dark Balance, Kuro, gained free will, and made it so that he kept it by hacking the files of the servers. Also, a major city in the world of the Epsilon Beta, ironically named Babylon, was destroyed.
For a time, things were relatively peaceful after the crash. The Beta testers entered the virtual world, notable ones amongst them being Blazen, Zane, Jaden (also known as Shadow or DragonFire), MegaMan Juno (who was the character of the aforementioned Hailin Bonnet), Morph, and also one who later became known as R.D., although he did not meet with the other five for a rather lengthy period of time.
Things were about to change, though, for Kuro, imbued with the data of his brothers, the failed Dark Balances, fused some of the data with four of the aforementioned Beta testers, ultimately resulting in their corruption by the data, turning them into complete beings of evil, Kuro’s brothers, NightShade—formed by the corruption of Juno, Akumu—formed by the corruption of Zane, Naze—formed by the corruption of Blazen, and ZetsumeiRyu—formed by the corruption of DragonFire, a.k.a. Jaden, by the hands of Xastra. Other failed Dark Balances arose also, but how they came to be is yet unknown, as was the case with Namonai, Kagai and Cyrus Nemesis and Ziatoch, the Destroyer of Worlds.
These beings of evil and their underlings, as well as others such as Xastra, the Sadistic One, who possessed Yamamoto’s youngest daughter Maya, wreaked havoc upon the virtual world, but eventually found their demise at the hands of the Beta testers.
However, things that had happened in the Beta test would leave their mark upon the virtual world, as well as those that had participated in it.
Ymaggion: The Beginning
After the Beta test had ended, the Staff would make sure that the game would not be yet released, not until most, if not all of the glitches, bugs and everything else that could be wrong with it would have been taken out of it. They succeeded… partly.
As the game was released and new players and old ones entered the virtual world, now named Ymaggion, it was discovered that the world still was glitched, and that it was the work of one former Beta tester named Samanosuke. The glitches eventually formed a gateway to the world of the Beta test and allowed Kuro to enter Ymaggion. Meanwhile, suspicious objects known as Black Suns had come into existence. These objects were engraved with the number ‘003’ and a Greek letter, Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, Epsilon, Zeta, Eta and Theta, respectively, as there were eight in total. Kuro got a hold of several of these, and used them to revive NightShade, Cyrus and Naze. However, before he could get a hold of the others, he met his death by the hands of the ninth Daughter of Light, Areni, supposedly destined to defeat him, with the help of Areni’s father, Gahm, the spiritual father of Ymaggion, Yamamoto himself, as well as nothing short of a hundred so-called ‘Gahm clones’.
However it went, it can be assured that the fight was nothing short of nasty.
As time went on, more of the Sons of Darkness, the failed Dark Balances, fell. Kagai and Cyrus, as well as Namonai and NightShade are now counted amongst the dead.
However, the threat of the Sons of Darkness still lingered after all this time, the Black Suns still existed, and two Sons were still alive. Although Akumu didn’t care much for finding the Black Suns and reviving his brethren because of his hateful and berserker-like nature, Naze Nightfield was all the more the right person to do so, and he indeed proceeded to discover the Black Sun of his brother ZetsumeiRyu and revived him. Ziatoch, meanwhile, the last of the Sons to enter Ymaggion, was the one behind a major glitch in the Newdam area, corrupting the minds and data of player characters, NPCs and monsters alike.
And so it all begins now. Five of the Nine have already fallen, and many of those who know that the Nine Sons even exist – considering most people who do don’t like to talk about it – have firm belief that the other four will fall soon enough.
It all started many years ago, with a simple idea that a certain Mister Yamamoto had: to create a game, a world like the one he lived in, where everything was possible, and everything seemed as real as things were in the world he was born in. He was but a mere boy that time, but he started to make it reality when he had accomplished becoming a programmer and designer of video games. Though he did not focus on his great dream, it was always there, within the depths of his mind whilst he was building career, working for different video game companies. It wasn’t until a rough dozen years ago he started working on his great dream, after having talked with people he had worked with over the years, and who agreed to help him.
The Creation of a New World
As Yamamato and his colleagues worked on the virtual world, they faced many troubles. The equipment of their time was barely advanced enough to support a great virtual network that were as complex as the one envisioned in the trilogy The Matrix, from which some inspiration was drawn. Whilst in development, the project was named “Project Epsilon”.
It took at least nine months for a tiny, incredibly realistic virtual world to become reality, which was quite an accomplishment. A month or two later, they had created a way for one to insert one’s mind into the virtual world without having to bore into ones head, but their being was formless in the virtual world. As such, it was a month after that that the team that had been tasked with the creation of characters were able to form the first realistic virtual body for the mind of a user to implement itself into. Thus, a person could first walk around inside the new world, which the creators decided to codename “Genesis” for the time being.
For the next months after this had been accomplished, the Character Development Team focused on the creation of realistic-looking and –acting virtual NPCs. It took them a while, and failures were not uncommon. It took them a full twenty-five weeks to at last create one single NPC that was capable of acting human-like, and also looked like a human and moved and walked like a human, but with the incredible capabilities of the virtual world, this being was capable of more than a human could in the real world. They named this being “Arumon”.
After this was done, development took a jumpstart. The base for Arumon’s character was used for the creation of other NPCs. They would not act exactly the same, or look exactly the same, they would just act and look human. And where the programmers failed to make a good NPC, they didn’t throw away the data, but used it to create the beings that became known as the ‘monsters’ of Genesis, like the animals were to Earth, and meanwhile, the virtual world was also expanded. From a small, desert-like place, it was expanded to include houses for the NPC and other buildings, forests and rivers, lakes and swamps, plains and mountains, seas and islands, volcanoes and grassy fields, inhabited by both NPC and monster.
As the virtual world expanded and became more vast, with more areas being added and more kinds of inhabitants being created, the Staff created several key characters of the world of Ymaggion: the Balance Programs and the Elemental Guardians.
Whilst the Elemental Guardians proved to be a challenge in creating, they were little compared to the Balance Programs. The Dark Balance Program, codenamed ‘003’, proved to be one of the hardest of all to create. Whilst the Light Balance Program, codenamed ‘004’, which later came to be known under the name of Awai, was fairly easy to create, it took several tries for the Staff to create the right kind of character they wanted to have as the Dark Balance. In fact, it took them nine tries, and upon the ninth try, they used their data from the previous eight tries to create it, resulting in the artificial birth of Kuro Balance.
The Epsilon Beta
After the people who created the game deemed it finished, they released a Beta version of it, and asked several people to test it out, selecting people who would be drawn to the idea because they liked gaming, had lively imaginations, or because they would gain something by playing the game, which was the case with the Beta tester Hailin Bonnet, who had lost his leg, and who would – upon entering the new virtual world – get to experience the feeling of having two legs again. Others became part of the Beta testing crew for their own personal gain, personal gain in either the virtual world or the real one.
However, things went horribly, horribly wrong during the Beta test of the Epsilon Project. Because in it’s early stages, before even one Beta tester had entered the virtual world, the servers of the corporation that had worked to create that world experienced a major crash, leaving the virtual world online, but with no connection between it and the real world. It was during these few minutes that the only successful Dark Balance, Kuro, gained free will, and made it so that he kept it by hacking the files of the servers. Also, a major city in the world of the Epsilon Beta, ironically named Babylon, was destroyed.
For a time, things were relatively peaceful after the crash. The Beta testers entered the virtual world, notable ones amongst them being Blazen, Zane, Jaden (also known as Shadow or DragonFire), MegaMan Juno (who was the character of the aforementioned Hailin Bonnet), Morph, and also one who later became known as R.D., although he did not meet with the other five for a rather lengthy period of time.
Things were about to change, though, for Kuro, imbued with the data of his brothers, the failed Dark Balances, fused some of the data with four of the aforementioned Beta testers, ultimately resulting in their corruption by the data, turning them into complete beings of evil, Kuro’s brothers, NightShade—formed by the corruption of Juno, Akumu—formed by the corruption of Zane, Naze—formed by the corruption of Blazen, and ZetsumeiRyu—formed by the corruption of DragonFire, a.k.a. Jaden, by the hands of Xastra. Other failed Dark Balances arose also, but how they came to be is yet unknown, as was the case with Namonai, Kagai and Cyrus Nemesis and Ziatoch, the Destroyer of Worlds.
These beings of evil and their underlings, as well as others such as Xastra, the Sadistic One, who possessed Yamamoto’s youngest daughter Maya, wreaked havoc upon the virtual world, but eventually found their demise at the hands of the Beta testers.
However, things that had happened in the Beta test would leave their mark upon the virtual world, as well as those that had participated in it.
Ymaggion: The Beginning
After the Beta test had ended, the Staff would make sure that the game would not be yet released, not until most, if not all of the glitches, bugs and everything else that could be wrong with it would have been taken out of it. They succeeded… partly.
As the game was released and new players and old ones entered the virtual world, now named Ymaggion, it was discovered that the world still was glitched, and that it was the work of one former Beta tester named Samanosuke. The glitches eventually formed a gateway to the world of the Beta test and allowed Kuro to enter Ymaggion. Meanwhile, suspicious objects known as Black Suns had come into existence. These objects were engraved with the number ‘003’ and a Greek letter, Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, Epsilon, Zeta, Eta and Theta, respectively, as there were eight in total. Kuro got a hold of several of these, and used them to revive NightShade, Cyrus and Naze. However, before he could get a hold of the others, he met his death by the hands of the ninth Daughter of Light, Areni, supposedly destined to defeat him, with the help of Areni’s father, Gahm, the spiritual father of Ymaggion, Yamamoto himself, as well as nothing short of a hundred so-called ‘Gahm clones’.
However it went, it can be assured that the fight was nothing short of nasty.
As time went on, more of the Sons of Darkness, the failed Dark Balances, fell. Kagai and Cyrus, as well as Namonai and NightShade are now counted amongst the dead.
However, the threat of the Sons of Darkness still lingered after all this time, the Black Suns still existed, and two Sons were still alive. Although Akumu didn’t care much for finding the Black Suns and reviving his brethren because of his hateful and berserker-like nature, Naze Nightfield was all the more the right person to do so, and he indeed proceeded to discover the Black Sun of his brother ZetsumeiRyu and revived him. Ziatoch, meanwhile, the last of the Sons to enter Ymaggion, was the one behind a major glitch in the Newdam area, corrupting the minds and data of player characters, NPCs and monsters alike.
And so it all begins now. Five of the Nine have already fallen, and many of those who know that the Nine Sons even exist – considering most people who do don’t like to talk about it – have firm belief that the other four will fall soon enough.