#fichina

Happy Spoopy Day~  Hope everyone is well.  I thought I could celebrate on here with some spooky headcanons!

Venom

Venom is considered to be a haunted, cursed place. There are remnants of several civilizations scattered across the planet, the most prominent being the ancient Cornerus and the far more recent failed Cornerian Settlement Project.

Not much is known about the Cornerus or what happened to them but their ruins still haunt Venom’s eerie landscape. There are rumors of ghosts that dwell within, wailing in a state of perpetual limbo with eyes that can invoke madness.  Usually these ghosts do not stray far from the old Cornerus cities but occasionally there have been sightings in the jungles.  Most sightings are usually laughed off fearfully-- people don’t want to admit there might be a nugget of truth to any of these rumors but the amount of people who have seen something paranormal in the wilds is incredibly high.

The Cornerian Settlement Project happened quite some time before the Lylat Wars, before even the time of James McCloud, Peppy Hare, and General Pepper.  The project was a colonization effort to start a third planetary hub that would function as a center of trade with planets further from Corneria, such as Sauria and Cerinia.  Back then, Venom had a different name, tentatively called “Eden”, though that name was quickly nixed after the Settlement Project.  Although some experts had already scoped Venom out and had reported high levels of toxins in the air, most of those reports were dismissed by settlers.  The sight that followed the settlers arriving was allegedly one so traumatic that the survivors immediately ran back onto the ships in horror.  As soon as the first group arrived, over half their number dropped dead on boarding ramp, their lungs clotted with airborne poisons.  The survivors wished to leave but eventually did decide to settle the proposed colony area on Venom.  However, within two years, the colony was abandoned, even after measures were taken to try to purify the air.  It is said that not only did the air make it hard to populate the land but there was an unnatural force that pushed the Cornerians out-- a force no one could see but could feel.  A force that would dismantle bits of their infrastructure and haunt their government officials at night.  After the Project failed, the planet’s name was switched to Venom and it was used as a place for exile.

Of course, Venom has seen plenty of civilizations who survived the toxic atmosphere -- namely reptilians who have long made their home amid the jungles.  Though reptiles are not entirely uncommon in the Lylat System, the varieties seen on Venom were viewed with apprehension, no doubt stemming from the fact that the planet itself seemed cursed, so everything that lived there also carried that same stigma.  From these early discoveries of Venomian reptiles came legends of alien-like beasts that would thrive in the dark jungles, abducting Lylatians and feasting upon their flesh.

Both Wolf and Andrew are cold climate animals. As such, they don’t need to dress in snow clothes for ground missions in arctic conditions. Their normal attire is usually enough for them.

Pigma and Leon, not so much. Pigma lacks fur, but he’s still warm blooded. Normal arctic clothing is enough. It’s Leon who is the real problem. As a cold blooded lizard, normal warm clothing is pointless. It’s like wrapping a potato in foil and expecting it to bake in a fridge. He requires heated clothing in order to just survive on cold planets. It’s pretty much a life support system for him at that point and his life expectancy on cold planets is tied to the batteries he keeps in that backpack. He’s one malfunction away from death at all times.

Wolf, of course, is paranoid about that. He usually avoids bringing Leon entirely if he can help it. Even Pigma has him worried. Wolf is no stranger to the arctic. He’s run across frozen bodies in the snow, even witnessed some succumb to hypothermia and he’s seen quite a few people lose fingers and limbs to frostbite, too. He makes sure to stop periodically to check Leon and Pigma for any signs of hypothermia or frostbite, even when it slows the mission down. Much to everyone’s annoyance.

I absolutely agree with this!  I like to think closer to the equator, there’s less of the frigid arctic wasteland that we see in the games.  I imagine there’s quite a bit of taigas and then, even more south, coniferous forests that stretch nearly as far as the eye can see and maybe even some cold grasslands.  Kinda of like... Skyrim, honestly (I’m a huge TES stan asjdf;alksdf).  Definitely a planet that sees snow often but with more diversity than just frosty tundra!  

Papetoon is known for its savannas and sparse forests.  Canyons have been carved through its mountainous regions for millennia by the tedious albeit steady work of freshwater rivers.  Rectangular plateaus are a common sight in the wildlands. In the areas near its equator, the grasslands evolve into dry, rocky semiarid deserts that stretch for hopeless miles and are said to house bandits and other ruffians looking to escape the law. Contrary to desert planets like Titania, Papetoon does have a few oceans.  The land steadily gets less arid the closer one gets to the oceanfronts.  It is not uncommon to see wetlands the further from the equator one gets.  There are even some instances of salt marshes in various locations. Rivers often split into estuaries at their end, creating forked, watery pathways.  

Fichina was once a land of tundras and alpine forests, but climate change due to natural phenomena (or so the Cornerian government states) caused its weather to go unpredictably out of control.  Despite efforts to colonize the frigid world, Corneria has had little success with making it a booming land of trade.  Climate control has somewhat stabilized the weather, allowing a few colonies to set up shop in scattered troves across the frozen planet’s surface.  Expeditions into the wilds have revealed an abundance of mountain ranges with breath-taking beauty, despite their current status as being mostly buried in heaps of white snow.  The aurora is a common sight, lighting up the night sky in a colorful spectacle. There are no known settlers on the planet except for the Cornerians, leaving it virtually untouched (most likely due to its inhospitable weather).  Cave systems lined in ice and hidden amid glaciers have recently become the target for exploration.  There are many eager souls wanting to see what may lie beneath the ice...

Solar is a planet dubbed absolutely inhospitable by the Cornerians, thus is largely overlooked despite its lethal, fascinating surface.  Oceans of violently crimson lava soak the planet, making its natural temperate way too hot for the average Lylatian to withstand without heavy equipment.  While most of the planet is lava, there are notable islands of charred black stone.  They are desolate. The only lifeforms that have been observed are the Gores-- leftover bioweapons created by the mad Dr. Andross in an attempt to make creatures able to withstand the high amounts of heat radiating from the planet.  They roam in lonely flocks, their numbers dwindling as time passes on.  Soon, like everything else that goes to the fiery world, they will die away and be reduced to ash.