An Overly Long Tangent Talking About Spazzy's Headcanons (TM)

[McSpazz]

Hey everyone! Thought I'd take another break from the super serious posts and make something a bit more on the silly side. These are some of my headcannons for the game world. You don't have to take them seriously. Like. At all. This is just some ideas I've had about how the world works.

 

1. Most of the Rogue Isles population doesn't own a car.

I'm going to explain my reasoning zone by zone.

 

Mercy Island

The vast majority of the zone is made up of slums (Darwin's Landing) that would probably allow a car to go unmolested for about 15 minutes at most. Mercy City itself is barely large enough to justify a moped. More importantly, however, is that there is literally no way to get your car from the raised fortress to the ferry below. So even if you somehow managed to get a car delivered into Mercy, you're going to have a hard time getting it anywhere else.

 

Port Oakes

This is actually one of two exceptions to my headcanon. It has plenty of roads and places to drive to. In fact, this is one of only two zones red side that actually has cars driving around the map. Interestingly enough, the tunnel connecting Port Oakes to Cap au Diable was actually destroyed after a turf war went explosive and has literally just been sitting there despite people actively petitioning Arachnos to repair it. Speaking of...

 

Cap au Diable

You know what I noticed about Cap? There's not really anywhere to park a car in most of the city. In fact, the only place you can find non-industrial cars parked is at the two ferry ports in the north and south. If you move around the industrial area, you'll see a lot of trucks parked, but none actually going around the city. In fact, because of the power grid built around in Cap au Diable (the PTS), most of the streets are completely inaccessible in the south. My theory is that Aeon was so focused on building his magnum opus that he failed to consider the infrastructural difficulties that would result from taking the fastest, potentially cheapest method possible. If he had dug the pipes into the ground, all of the roads would still be accessible. Instead, they are just built over the existing roads (since there was no room anywhere else) and just left it at that. The only place there's any room to drive, really, is New Haven which could be argued is the "nice" part of town (which is exactly the kind of place that would have the influence to insist on smarter deployment of the system). But as there is really no room to drive in Aeon City, the only place you can really drive is to the ferry. So the only people who would probably have a car either frequently travel on the ferry to other islands where driving is actually a useful thing to do or are using the car as more of a status symbol that they never actually use. If anything, the fact the island is extremely difficult to navigate with a full sized car might be part of the reason the tunnel between Cap and Oakes was never rebuilt.

 

Sharkhead Isle

Now, hold on, I bet you're saying. Sharkhead has plenty of roads! Plenty of places to park and drive! Why would you say few residents here own cars? Well, quite simply, the island is a company town. Cage Consortium basically owns the whole bloody island. I dare you to find a single (functional) land based vehicle on Sharkhead that isn't a truck. Those trucks aren't owned by the residents, they're owned by the company. Besides, the vast majority of the island is under Cage's thumb and likely don't make a ton of money. How could they afford to even buy a car, let alone maintain it?

 

Nerva Archipelago

You know what most residents here likely own? Small motor boats or even rowboats. You know what they couldn't drive around on in a city with literally no roads. intended for anything but pedestrian traffic. Not even Crey uses cars here. Much like Mercy, even if you owned a car here, you'd have nowhere to bring it.

 

St. Martial

This is my second exception to the rule. Not much to say here. The roads are (mostly) functional and there are actual cars driving around. Nothing really to add here, but it's still an exception.

 

Grandville

This one shouldn't need much explaining. The upper levels of the city are most definitely not designed for vehicle traffic. The lower levels of the city, while they could have supported vehicles at some point, clearly can no longer as the entire city has been segmented off and blocked off with checkpoints. It's little surprise that an organization that emphasizes control over its subjects would limit their mobility as well.

 

And just to make this a complete...

 

Warburg

It's a literal warzone that is under constant attack. The only vehicles driven around here are likely the heavily armored kind.

 

Bloody Bay

While there are still civilians that live here, they likely go out of their way to not draw attention to themselves. Not only can no cars be seen driving around, but the fact there are literal alien invaders filled with the desecrated corpses of former residents probably encourages people to travel, at most, on a quiet bike.

 

The Abyss

Lol no.

 

TL;DR: The only place people are going to own their own car is going to be in St. Martial or Port Oakes.

 

2. The Zig isn't the prison. Brickstown is.

Those that read my post on lore and headcanon already know my stance on the Zig. However, because of how many people disagree with me on it, I came up with a headcanon to explain why the Zig is still utilized. Strap in because I have a lot of logic behind this.

 

First, let's start with the obvious. The zone is surrounded by War Walls. That means that there are only five ways of getting out of the zone. The first is by air which is not something a prisoner is likely going to be able to do on their own. I don't think it's even possible to fly past the war walls if you simply fly high enough...it would defeat the purpose of the walls to begin with. So you would need some kind of sponsor to get out this way (like Arachnos). The second way out is on foot through the tunnel which seems very improbable. What are the chances they don't have some kind of checkpoint to prevent something like that from happening within the tunnel itself? There's also the tram which is literally guarded by robots that are extremely effective at arresting people so that's another no go. You could try your luck with the sewer system, but even if we discount the fact that there is no way that we as players can access the sewer system of Brickstown via the main network that connects much of the city, the sewers are absolutely filled with people that might attack you on sight. Lastly, there's the exit into Crey's Folly which...I mean, even if you could press past the security checkpoint there, I don't think surviving the trek through Crey's Folly out to the Rikti Warzone is going to be an easy trek.

 

So we've established that, even after escaping the Zig, you're going to have a hard time escaping. Not only would this explain the prisoner mobs that are only really found in Brickstown itself, but it would also explain something else found around the zone. If you aren't interesting to any other major criminal organization that can extract you from Brickstown, do you know who would most certainly be interested in somebody who has everything to lose? Crey Industries who, if you look around the zone, can be seen negotiating with prisoners. What better location to get cheap labor (or even test subjects) that you can keep off the books than Brickstown? All of this would also explain why it took a massive military force like Arachnos to not just assault the Zig but extract a ton of high value prisoners.

 

There's a reason I wanted to open with how hard it is to break out of the zone because there's another layer here. The actual layout of the city places its tallest buildings not just farthest from the prison but also closest to the most obvious points of extraction: the tram, the tunnel going to Independence Port, and the checkpoint to Crey's Folly. These tall buildings, in the event of a large scale prison break, could be used as sniper/lookout posts. They are effectively covert watch towers. What's more, the zone is, for the most part, extremely flat. There are very few points that are elevated outside of the buildings themselves. That is, with one major exception: The heavily industrialized zone in the north. A place that would likely have plenty of things a prisoner could use as an improvised weapon has major choke points and can be easily sealed off. It's not perfect, mind you, but the general design of Brickstown does make containing escapes far more feasible.

 

Which finally brings us to the districts in the the city. To the far north and around most of the prison, we have industrial buildings and warehouses with the heavy industrial buildings being sunk into the ground and easy to seal off and the smaller scale industrial buildings and warehouses almost all being fenced off.  We have residential and shopping districts located to the west with the industrial areas acting as a buffer with a few scattered around the east and south but, as we have established, the only route of egress there is maybe the sewers and it isn't something you'd be keen to use. Office spaces that could house the administration of the prison are located to the far north and north west, making the life of any prisoner trying to get access to there to get access to prison documents all the more harder. But all of these different districts brings more to my mind than simply providing buffer zones, though.

 

Everything the prison needs to operate save perhaps for power generation exists within the city itself. Where do the employees live? Residential district. Where do they shop for goods? Within Brickstown. Where does the prison get its processed materials (be it food or building equipment)? The northern industrial sector. Where does it store its raw and processed goods? The warehouses within the zone itself. Literally everything the prison and its employees need to survive can all be found within the zone itself. Shipments into the city would mainly be raw goods and very little needs to be shipped out. This last point is vital for this headcanon to function because it provides a massive blow to any escape plan involving sneaking out with shipments or getting something smuggled in.

 

It's all a little convoluted but...I rather like it. "Okay. Congrats. You broke out of the Zig. Now what?"

 

3. Portal Corp isn't Open House

I think a lot of people take Portal Corps for granted. As super heroes, you're going to have far easier access. But I think the full extent of what Portal Corp has found and is capable of is kept pretty close to their chest. Nevermind the security checkpoint in their front lobby, the actual means of traveling to other dimensions, even known to the world, is likely not really possible by the vast majority of the world; including the metahuman community.

 

My justification for this? Their list of dimensional coordinates appears to be strictly confidential and something of a holy grail among the villain community. In the Dr. Aeon Strike Force, one of the places High Roller shunts you to involves attacking a Vanguard Base. To avoid major spoilers, there is a means you can do this that would give you the opportunity to get Portal Corps full list of dimensional coordinates. When that assault concludes, however, you not only don't get that list, it's given the air that not being given that list is a huge disappointment.

 

This makes sense, when you think about it. The risk of outside influences interfering with scientific endeavors that rely on fragile ecosystems aside, there's also the risk that someone who doesn't know any better could stumble into a dimension you have marked as extremely dangerous and accidentally spread a threat from that dimension to here.

 

The technology of dimensional travel and the restrictions on the coordinates is so great that, as far as I can tell, the only other canon group to accomplish this to the same level as Portal Corp is Arachnos and Dr. Aeon. This isn't a huge surprise, but it does set the bar pretty high.

 

4. The Rogue Isles Have Free Public Schools Funded by Arachnos

This might, initially, seem odd to you. Why the hell would Arachnos pay to educate children? Well, it's not as selfless as it sounds.

 

To start, we already know that Arachnos is willing to fund public welfare programs as a means of advancing their own goals. The orphanage in Grandville is a great example of this (do NOT play that arc unless you want to feel like a horrible person). However, one need to look no further than the real world to see why this would be appealing.

 

The first is pretty obvious. Indoctrination. Ideologies picked up and held by children into adulthood are by its nature going to be extremely difficult to remove. In case it isn't obvious, there's a lot of things that Recluse would want to teach to his people as young as possible. Respect for authority, distrust of outsiders, the list goes on. In fact, at this point in time, people who were children when City of Villains first came out are now old enough to serve him as loyal soldiers (feeling old yet?) and, as time goes on, he can only get more of them. What's more, I seem to remember that the primary religion in the Rogue Isles literally is worshiping Recluse as a god king. What better place to reinforce how awesome he is compared to everyone else than in a setting you are told that everything presented is truth?

 

But it goes deeper than that. The far larger thing that Recluse needs to avoid is brain drain.

 

One of the biggest reasons public schools were created, made mandatory, and made widely accessible in the united states was not a desire to enrich the youth but, instead, to futureproof the working class. Industrialists realized that advancing technology was requiring more and more that those operating them have some level of basic education. They ended up spending time teaching adults things as simple as reading, writing, and basic arithmetic. So, what did they do? Lobby the government to create public schools. That way the burden of teaching these skills was taken off of their own shoulders and, instead, put onto society at large. If you've ever heard that schools are more focused on making you learn to memorize and listen to orders instead of using critical thinking, that's why.

 

But why bring all of that up? Even people who only have an interest in profit see a value in ensuring the population is educated and prepared to work once they come of age. This would not only definitely be a thing Recluse would make note of, but would also address brain drain. To those that don't know, brain drain is when a region begins to struggle to maintain a workforce because the youth are moving away to find greener pastures, are unable to educate people to the same standard as those that came before them, are incapable of attracting skilled laborers to the region (see the shortage of medical professionals in the United States), or a mixture of the three.

 

Let's be real, living in the Rogue Isles probably sucks to anyone who doesn't know of any other life or isn't internationally wanted elsewhere. At this point, natives to the Rogue Isles who were there before Recluse took over are dying off. The number of people moving into the Isles is likely a trickle at best. His plans absolutely require an extremely well educated working force and he can't just kidnap all of them from other countries. It's not sustainable. The number of people you would need to kidnap at a minimum for Recluse to keep the Isles operating and under his control is huge. Never mind his soldiers, he also needs doctors and engineers. The more he relies on private interests like Crey, Aeon, the Family, etc to handle keeping things running, the less of an importance Arachnos would appear to have on the islands. Appearing to be less important than the people maintaining your roads is not something he could tolerate.

 

Put simply: The strong rise to the top...but they must be taught to hold a sword first. If he doesn't cultivate his own people with opportunities to climb their way up through education, his rule isn't going to last another generation.

---

Those are probably my top 4 picks. I have one kind'a brewing around Ouroborus, but it's way more speculative than anything else. What does everyone think? Am I making valid points here, or is this just another case of trying to find Pepe Sylvia?

 

 

This post is tangentially part of my series talking about roleplaying! You can see the full list of posts Here!

Edited March 17, 2022 by McSpazz
Added my theories on public schooling in Etoli

[starro]

I like reading through this.after all these years  In port Oakes they have yet to finish the highway by one of the ports 

[McSpazz]

48 minutes ago, starro said:

I like reading through this.after all these years  In port Oakes they have yet to finish the highway by one of the ports 

I like to think that they canceled the project ages ago and just forgot to tell the workers who still show up and touch up what they've done so far while they wait for more materials.

[Andreah]

I concur about the dimensions and Portal Corps.  One of the things that surprises me is that there aren't greater defenses around the gates given how dangerous some of the dimensions they connect to are. 

 

In my own headcanon, I've assumed Portal Corps has constant gate monitoring and "Ready Teams" which include superpowered hero volunteers/employees on constant standby, ready to rush to any gate which has trouble coming through it the wrong way.

 

One might also presume that Portal Corps, or someone, somewhere, monitors the rest of the Paragon City region for gates coming into prime dimension from elsewhere. I suppose some of the praetorian story lore may get at that, such as Apex TF.

[McSpazz]

2 hours ago, Andreah said:

One might also presume that Portal Corps, or someone, somewhere, monitors the rest of the Paragon City region for gates coming into prime dimension from elsewhere. I suppose some of the praetorian story lore may get at that, such as Apex TF.

Many of the story arcs done by Portal Corp employees involves investigating stuff like that as far as I remember.

[Kiken]

7 hours ago, Andreah said:

I concur about the dimensions and Portal Corps.  One of the things that surprises me is that there aren't greater defenses around the gates given how dangerous some of the dimensions they connect to are. 

I always assumed Vanguard having a DPO just down the road wasn't a coincidence.

[McSpazz]

Added one more headcanon I like it. >.>;

[_Kai_]

Well, kinda have to pop your theory about Brickstown 🙂  It sounds like a good idea, and it absolutely started as prison support, The Zig was originally known as The Brick, but there is too much evidence in the game that it's now just another city zone that also happens to have a supermax prison in it.

 

Kinda have to point out that all the city zones are surrounded by walls so that's nothing really different than King's Row, or Skyway, or any of the interior city zones, they all have limited access, as it was to protect from the Rikti(nevermind the ships that fly right over them we're not going to get into that lunacy 😂), that Brickstown only has one 'escape' connection is because the other became an ecological mess. Venice(Crey's Folly) and Woodvale(Eden) used to be central parts of the city, so it stands to reason that once upon a time Brickstown was the fringe, but over time Paragon expanded past it, into the industrial Venice and the well off suburbs of Woodvale(Eden). Technically, prisoners can escape to the Folly and Eden but that just makes their situation worse now. Pre Rikti, the path to Venice would not have been guarded, and from there it would have been easy to hide out or try to make their way to the suburbs and escape the city.

 

Crey actually isn't in the zone for any appeal or use of prisoners, that may be a side gig for them, but there are actually Crey buildings in several zones, and more importantly, it was called Crey's Folly because Venice was their major HQ before the disaster that ruined it, so when they pulled out, they pulled out to Brickstown.  You can see NPC chatter in Crey's Folly of them still trying to reclaim things from the zone, it makes sense for that to have a big presence in Brickstown.  Their PR reps out on the corners as NPCs also have lines where they are demonstrating for citizens and residents.  If you are inclined to consider stuff from the Story Bible to be canon as well, Crey has personnel called Hacks that work exclusively in the Zig as guards which would make sense for their corporate office to manage them to be close by.

 

Most damning though, is that Brickstown is where the Praetorian refugees were resettled.  After The Council broke out all the prisoners in the Zig in Marchand's New Praetorians arc(it literally specifies all, heh), it's revealed that the New Praetorians have taken up residence there, and that's where the bulk of the refugees have settled.  I can't imagine that many of them are prison employees, and that heavily implies that the infrastructure either exists, or was built, to support a couple hundred to thousand people depending on how many people you attribute surviving Praetoria.

 

 

 

[CellyEl]

Yeah, the war walls weren't built until 2002-2003 (using reverse-engineered Rikti tech), and the Zig itself is a lot older than that. While the risk of breakouts probably keeps property levels low, there's too much in Brickstown that's not related to the Zig for the zone to be just prison and prison accessories, I'm afraid.

[Crasical]

Recluse is a technocrat; despite there only being one university in the isles (and them being portrayed as comically inept and negligent) I've gotta assume that there's a big push towards bettering yourself with science and technology; and having public schools for that is an obvious angle.

[ZorkNemesis]

On 3/16/2022 at 9:23 PM, Andreah said:

I concur about the dimensions and Portal Corps.  One of the things that surprises me is that there aren't greater defenses around the gates given how dangerous some of the dimensions they connect to are. 

 

The portal that leads to the Shadow Shard had a ton of defensive fortifications back during live days, mainly to show that it isn't just a mission door, but also leads to the idea that they would be absolutely need to be ready if any Rularuu were able to make it through the Firebase.  Why did they get rid of those anyway?

[McSpazz]

My bubble on the Zig has mostly been popped, but I will hold on just a wee bit longer. I still feel like that even if the zone wasn't built around the Zig being there (Warwalls included), what I brought up would still make escapes extremely difficult.