#sism lore

[slumber-sims]

Kristopher lore!!!

So okay we need to talk about this man because while his intentions are in the right place, there are things he still doesn't understand...

...for one, Kristopher looks up to his parents SO MUCH, but he looks at them and their accomplishments and then he looks at himself and doesn't see the same achievements, like he hasn't done anything huge...

in one of his in-game dialogues he talks about the previous generations of Volkovs and how his parents were original mooncasters and their parents fought in the century conflict and how their parents were well adjusted, high ranked spellcasters and he's just some guy

but like, he took in two children when they were at their worst and he adopted them, he also took in an adult woman when she was miserable and feral, he gave them shelter, all the love he had, and he helped them back up on their feet, he raised two children all by himself and watched them grow up

he doesn't realize that that is huge

he changed their lives, okay, he's done more for those three than the previous Volkovs did for any wolf, that's huge.

... and for two, he doesn't understand that it almost creates some kind of generational cycle of him putting all this pressure on himself to not only accomplish something like his folks did, but to also fulfill what they couldn't, and in the process, unconsciously, putting twice as much pressure on Jacob to do the same thing

like think about it, Kristopher has immortality and doesn't plan to keep it forever, he will literally decide one day to end his life and just put all of that weight on Jacob's shoulders...

[tf-stuck-in-slow-motion]

Nobody Sent A Rung Ask, So I Made An Excuse To Talk About Him Myself

Oh, man, SISM Rung is... something.

But before we get to him, we need to get through the story of another character. The story of one Ruthenus Prime. 

See, Ruthenus Prime was a Prime - a position held for life. He died, obviously. But less than a week after he died... his body was absolutely nowhere to be found. It seemingly just walked right out of the very expensive, very ornate coffin it was set in.

Now, I like writing in snippets that gradually start to reveal the horror to you a la 1800s, but I feel like you all already know what happened. He became undead - the Matrix was left in his body too long, and started to heal his spark to a point where he was no longer dead.

However, there are a couple drawbacks to this Matrix-created spark. Namely, it isn’t a spark that fuels itself, and you constantly need to consume spark energy one way or another. Such energy is very very hard to find... that is, outside of a Cybertronian body. It is safe to say that newly reanimated Ruthenus quickly turned to cannibalism, learning the methods that many dubious street-doctors had to extract the most spark energy out of a corpse, get the most bang for your cannibalistic buck.

Eventually, he found that these spark-energy processes took too long, and he needed something to live on that would be produced quickly. Unfortunately, there was no known way of quickly getting a higher concentration of spark energy. So what did he do?

Change his name to something incredibly forgettable and murder and eat people on the streets regularly.

Newly-coined Rung also managed to binge-eat enough spark energy at once to take a psychology license course and pass it with flying colors. Ruthenus Prime was quite the empathetic man, after all, and was always quick to be able to tell just how you were feeling. Now, Rung was not simply an alias, Rung was an entirely different creature, no well-known Prime who was still missing, just a humble therapist with an unusual optic problem he never specified.

Well, this eye problem was that after he was revived from the dead, his optics kept falling out of his face. They were still perfectly intact, and he could see just fine out of them, but they just... fell out. As all optometry problems are solved, however, he had a simple fix thanks to a pair of glasses! That also happens to be his eyes. That he can set down and leave and just... watch that area, for however long he wants to, and put them back on like nothing happened. He occasionally forgets to put his eyes on before he goes to work, that’s an inconvenience if I’ve ever seen one.

His altmode is a mystery to many. It’s not whatever the hell it was in Lost Light - that’s a Primus thing, Primus isn’t in SISM - but it’s certainly not any ordinary altmode. If he insists he isn’t a clock... what’s with all the timepieces?

[tf-stuck-in-slow-motion]

Archive: what’s the history or worldbuilding behind x thing or event?

for the cassettes meeting Soundwave?

~~

I went WAY into worldbuilding for cassettes and how they work in SISM, but I’ll keep this answer to the worldbuilding behind Soundwave and veis specific cassettes - Rumble, Frenzy, Ratbat, and Ravage.

To summarize the entire paragraphs I wrote on the history of cassettes and how they’re deployed: cassettes are now data slugs, data slugs are one of the most common altmodes on Cybertron, and they’re ejected using extensions, with some of these extensions able to shoot them out at full force.

Rumble and Frenzy were orphaned due to both their parents perishing in a “factory accident”, and turned to street fighting to keep themselves somewhere in the realm of actually having money. Both of them found Soundwave through the Decepticons, choosing to join the rebellion once it was gaining traction and with Soundwave growing attached to both of them, viewing both of them as veis children of sorts despite not being all that much older than them (the Frumbles are the Cyb equivalent of about 16, and Soundwave is the Cyb equivalent of 24).

Ravage, on the other hand, was found by Soundwave. In this cont, Ravage isn’t necessarily a cat, more of... the best term I can use is ‘catboy’, DAMMIT I’ve put a catboy in my cont. Catboy crimes aside, it is part of a subspecies of data slugs that took on slightly more animalistic appearances. Ravage has never said a word about how it found Soundwave, and Soundwave has never said a word about how vi found it, but they’re very closely intertwined - some suspect the two are siblings, others that Ravage has been a spy working for Soundwave for many many years.

Ratbat is the oldest of the cassettes, much older than Soundwave, too. Originally the owner of a small but successful TV company, after fli allowed some very anti-government productions on fligs channels, fli was (nearly) government blackbagged and had fligs company dismantled due to some “infighting” that “grew too wild to control”. Left destitute and angry at government censorship, fli was left with a common choice of those left destitute in this world - join a gang or survive alone. In fligs case, fli knew fli couldn’t possibly hold fligs own, and joined a gang, in this case, a gang that soon osmosis’d into the Decepticons. Fli becomes an unwilling uncle of sorts to Rumble and Frenzy, who eventually drag him into the weird little family that is the cassettes.

If you want to learn about the history of cassettes, please ask, I wrote so much on it before realizing it didn’t relate to the question. But here’s your cassette lore.

[tf-stuck-in-slow-motion]

SISM Intricacies: Gender

This one’s a very important one, as it explains a lot throughout the course of SISM.

The big one here you need to know about is: everyone has their own gender. A SISM Cybertronian is born with its own personal gender, which they define with their Cybertronian pronouns. The translation of its gender on Earth may not quite line up with the traditional pronoun association (Blackarachnia adopts she/her on Earth but uses neutral formalities) but such is the case when your gender is essentially your name.

Pronouns are still sorted into groups. The first official shorthand pronouns were created in Cybertronian sign language, the official worldwide version, and were later translated into verbal language. The best translations of these are something like “A/As/Aself”, for all twenty-six letters of the alphabet. For example, Drift (ke/ki/kis/kiself) and Windblade (ka/kat/kats/katself) would be in the K/Ks/Kself pronoun group, and Knockout (tep/teps/tepself) and Pharma (tor/tors/torself) would be in the T/Ts/Tself pronoun group. There is also the universal pronoun of ‘they’ for groups and individuals whose pronouns you don’t know, and ‘it’ for individuals who haven’t decided pronouns yet.

It/its/itself is special. Some Cybertronians choose to be referred to with object pronouns, and thus it/its/itself are the only Cybertronian pronouns that are assigned to more than one Cybertronian. Others use it/its/itself because their gender hasn’t developed yet. The closest analogy I can place to the former is voidpunk - in which one adopts the act of not being considered human. The latter is simply like referring to yourself as they/them because you don’t vibe with he/him or she/her and are just starting out with nonbinary labels.

That’s about everything you really need to know about Cybertronian gender. There are gender-related subcultures, and how alien pronouns are adopted into Cybertron, and the incredibly complicated relationship systems have with gender, considering every part tends to have their own, but other than that, this will clear up many pronoun-related conundrums you’ll encounter in SISM.

[tf-stuck-in-slow-motion]

SISM Worldbuilding: Religion

Religion on SISM Cybertron is... so far, different from any canon Cybertron I’ve seen.

After the Quintesson invasion, organized religion was banned, and, soon after that, all religion was banned, because in the eyes of the Cybertronian government, “any religion can become organized religion. We must cancel the project before losing any more laborers.”

The calendar follows a system of tens: 

Ten Cybertronian hours (38 Earth hours) in a day 

Ten days in a week

Five weeks in a month

Ten months in a year 

Total: 500 days in a year exactly

SISM Cybertron is also a Dyson sphere, meaning it does not have a natural day/night cycle, natural seasonal cycle, or even natural bodies of water - and even if it did have these bodies of water, it would not have tides. This also means that Cybertron has no strictly aquatic altmodes. Things like hydroplanes, watercraft that can hover on land, and things like Nautica’s altmode in IDW1 - suited for short-distance space travel as well as sea travel - are allowed on SISM, but there are no boats or other strictly waterbound altmodes. Sorry, boatformers.

A ban on spirituality also means that there are many spiritual-aligned objects on the SISM black market. Things like tarot readings, specific candle scent combinations, hope stones, certain crystals, pendulums, et cetera can be found on the darker streets of SISM, and some casinos even have tarot tables, where you can pay for a reading.

The position of Prime is not granted, but elected, and held for life. The current Prime, Windblade Prime, is especially young for a Prime, and is expected to hold her position for a very long time, until someone decides to assassinate her. Seeing as she is trying to reintroduce religion back into Cybertron’s population, a decision the majority of the Council abhors... that might be shockingly soon.

Now, why did I infodump all this Cybertronian religion information out of nowhere?

Well, Rung’s here, in SISM. Yet there is no Primus, and no mythical creations. So what might he be doing here...?

Stay tuned!

[tf-stuck-in-slow-motion]

I'm interested in the history of cassettes too if you want to share?

Lovely Nonnie and @hashkivenu , here is your long-awaited cassette lore. Apologies for not getting to this post sooner, as I have Neurodivergence and that means when I update things it is in large but sporadic bursts.

Cassette history!

...well, it should be referred to as “cassettes”, as the cassette as we know it... never was an altmode. If it were, it would not serve the purpose that your usual cassettes serve in Transformers.

What are cassettes then, you might wonder?

Data slugs!

Ever since Cybertron began erasing history, Cybertronian evolution began to favor the data slug as an altmode. Now that information was being taken away so easily, the Cybertronian form naturally needed some way to better retain it, and increasing the likelihood of the offspring of a data slug being another data slug was evolution’s best bet. Data slugs are now the #1 must common altmode on Cybertron because of this.

The “deployer” part came about in a much stranger way. A Cybertronian inventor had a conjunx whose altmode was a data slug, and said data slug had a physical disability in which not enough fluid was ever able to reach their walking joints, making it very difficult for them to move around in root mode no matter how many limb replacements they received. This inventor designed a sort of plug that could be attached to their wrist, a plug that a data slug could plug into to easily be carried around in. This was known as a “data plug”. Keep that term in mind, it becomes very important.

Data plugs went through refinement and were eventually used for all sorts of Cybertronians, with the added convenience that it did not matter what your altmode was, anyone could wear a data plug as long as they were large enough. However, their method of releasing the slug was clunky and required multiple steps, being inconveniently time-consuming.

A Cybertronian weapons scientist sought to create a data plug with a simple, one-step ejection method. Unfortunately, their first prototype of ejection resulted in the data slug model being fired across the room, embedding itself into a wall. The scientific community got a bit of a laugh out of that one, and the ejection process was eventually refined to a simple button press that quickly and safely released the slug, but some began using this much more forceful method of ejection. One particular data-slug-and-data-plug duo used this to fire the slug at a target, a giant, living projectile attack.

More data plug advancements developed from here. An attachment that allowed someone with a data plug to recall a data slug in alt mode like a boomerang could clip to a data slug’s wrist. Data plugs could now plug directly into the processors of the plug wearer, able to easily send information to the processor of the data plug wearer. This information was no longer permanent, and would fade like a memory of watching a video, but it was still a useful addition to the data plug arsenal.

Nowadays, due to the sheer amount of data slugs in the world, many data slug Cybertronians have a data plug companion. Some data-slug-and-data-plug partnerships include Soundwave and veis four slugs, whom vi calls “cassettes” (Rumble, Frenzy, Ratbat and Ravage), Swindle and aurus two slugs (Laserbeak and Buzzsaw), and Chromedome with surs only slug and conjunx, Rewind.

[tf-stuck-in-slow-motion]

SOUNDWAVE SOUNDWAVE SOUNDWAVE

SOUNDWAAAAVE!

Vi was actually the character that got me motivated to do the whole ‘everyone has their own gender’ thing in SISM. Thank you, Soundwave, for being such a nonbinary icon that you made everyone else in SISM nonbinary, except for Megaempress, who is very very clearly a trans woman and erasing a trans woman’s identity in favor of nonbinaryness is... not good. But onto the actual Soundwave lore!

Vi was born without a face. Just deadass didn’t have one. This doesn’t seem like much of an inconvenience among these weird-faced robots, but vi was also lacking a voicebox. This also doesn’t seem like much of an inconvenience among these weird-faced robots, but Cybertron has no official sign language.

See, being created by the Quints as a species of laborers, Cybertronians never really had the time to develop a language using their hands (chirolinguistics also does not exist here). And the natural flow of time to separate your language from others’s and get a community really speaking it... wasn’t exactly available for Soundwave to utilize.

So vi did the chad thing and got a bunch of other deaf, mute, and selectively mute Cybertronians together and made sign language. 

Not just made their own sign language. Made the official, still-used Cybertronian sign language.

It’s still widely used today, and Soundwave is adding new words as necessary, with the consulting of other Cybertronian sign language speakers, of course. 

Vi is also a skilled bassist, and accidental adopted parent of three cassettes. Veis fourth cassette is... kind of more of the tired uncle to the other three. Unlike canon, all four of veis cassettes have hands - not just the Frumbles - and three of them have learned Cybertronian sign language, so they can talk to their parent without needing Blackarachnia to translate the sign (kha learned to speak it back during khyr time in the mafia, speaking without voice was useful and there were a surprising amount of mute and deaf Cybertronians there). The fourth cassette is Rumble, who has some hand problems, as well as absolutely no thoughts in trebles head.

Vi keeps tabs on Decepticon communications, making sure their communication signal is private to only those who have the code and making sure any messages spies send are never found. But don’t underestimate vei and veis dextrous hands - vi can fight when vi needs to.

And there’s a number-one rule among the Decepticon ranks.

Don’t look at what’s behind veis mask.

[tf-stuck-in-slow-motion]

A Question

Would you all be up for just completely unprompted background character lore dumping, without a Roster ask about the character? Or do you only want the background characters I receive a Roster ask for? 

I say this because I received a Slipstream ask, and she is not in the primary primary SISM roster but now I want nothing more but to talk about her. And Tyrest, who is in no way related to her. And Transmutate, and Rung, and the history behind the Seekers... just so much. So much thoughts.