Talk:History of SC
From SCross
SC: Awakenings is where I got my original start in Southern Cross, and I still remember the dirty, rugged simplicity of it, the gritty "welcome to your shithole refuge against a world that wants to eat you".
Playing a monster there (Bahumat) was great; I was shot at frequently, and got to run with the concept of a world that was re-"awakening", not just the planet, but the people within it, the wildlife, the monsters. Bahumat was that writers experiment of "how do I start with an intelligent but not conscious creature, and run it in a world like this, awakening as the rest of it did?"
From there, one of my favorite all-time scenes from any SC, sprung the "Bahumat discovers the brick walls and thus geometry." moment, his personal equivalent of the black obelisk. (Cue 2001 Space Odyssey music.)
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Southern Cross:HoTE was even more deeply interesting; take the promise of all this available code and rich, vibrant theme, familiar enough to ground us, unfamiliar enough to go exploring. The return of Bahumat was deeply satisfying; the writer in me thrilled at the prospect of background stories (A tradition I miss, alas).
New Junonsburg and Drominham both had a very distinct and lively cultural feel; as the game grew, the culture felt very organic, and the roleplay excelled. It was, certainly, the finest of the SC's, but I admit that Forbidden Lands yet has a chance to surpass HotE. I remember HotE as primarily the domain of titans, as the years went by; people established their power early and grew. Nobles walked the city and were kowtowed to; beasts great and terrible shook the earth, the church was a glorious power revered and feared, and even the humble common man could rise to greatness by bravery and action. Hell, you could enjoy political plays, one of the hardest kinds of RP to foster in any game.
Theme was tight (some screamed, too tight), people understood their places, and how the world around them felt. During this period too, my own writing for SC flourished; put together what I could for Nuku, fought with every other staffer as I played Comissar to everything done, slapping down or promoting up ideas that worked with the feel of the world.
Loved it, and have something like 15 megabytes of nothing but text files of logs, writing, and stories I did for the game. It's a big chunk of my creative output throughout the early-mid 2000's.
Favorite HotE memory: Van giddy and vomiting blood after nearly killing king Rinaldo from drinking his blood, and Bahumat chasing her down through the Noble sector, trashing a few walls and gates as he went, before driving a talon through her diseased brain and ending her craziness once and for all. As a result, Bahumat was chained in the arena, and eventually exiled to Drominham.
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Southern Cross: Blood and Iron. Well... I loved it, but so few others did. It was a cyberpunk world, a vicious, dirty one, but fantasy tended to draw much more interest than niche science-fiction did. Sigh. I'll remember Blood and Iron for the over-arching feel of the big titans: Megacorps and Military, and the way their struggle trod on the humble 'jacker below. I also liked that life was cheap in it; a bullet to the brain will kill your ass, no matter how tough you are. The world was dangerous, it was dirty, it was gritty, and even the "clean" places were built on the backs of the humble streeties.
Favorite B&I memory: Balus opening his machine gun up into a riot, uncaringly gunning down criminals and innocents alike. He was military, after all. Shoot 'em all, let Gaia sort it out.
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