#lore document

Timeline

The AU starts In early-mid 2068, the year that the OG Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons takes place in. Specifically, it takes place not long after the episode Spectrum Strikes Back. In this setting, International Rescue have been in operation for about two years, and all of TOS is assumed to have happened already. For the most part, the introduction of OCs to the space won't impact subsequent OG CapScar episodes much, with at most my own Spectrum characters running around doing their jobs in the background. There will be a couple of exceptions, but I'm keeping those to myself for later 😈

State of Canon Characters: Spectrum

For the Spectrum cast, it is pretty much the personnel from the OG show, with a couple of caveats; the side characters from NCS are here under different but matching codenames (e.g. NCS Magenta is Captain Fuchsia. Pat's beefing with him), and Lieutenant Green is a trans woman.

State of Canon Characters: iR

For Internation Rescue, I'm being MUCH more annoying. Here we have TOS Blond John and Ginger Gordon, but also TAG Black Hair Virgil, because I love them. Scott is a pretty even blend of both versions, and Alan is like 80% TOS but I've stolen a few design quirks from TAG (also he might become a woman at some point). Jeff is still in the picture because of the TOS base. TAG Brains is here alongside Tin-Tin and her dad, with the the Kyrano family being Chinese Malaysian. They moved to the UK when Ren (Kyrano's given name!) and his twin brother (😉) were young. I've also mixed up everyone's image colours because it's my AU and I get to do what I like, so it goes;

Jeff - Steel/Dark Grey

Ren - Silver/Light Grey

Scott - Light Blue

Virgil - Forest Green

John - Lilac

Gordon - Yellow

Alan - Red

Tin-Tin - Turquoise

Brains - Orange

Larkin (OC) - Indigo

Morgan (OC) - Black

I like that in TAG Jeff had the grey belt before Scott so for me that's like, the leader of iR. Ren gets light grey because he's officially second in command!

State of Original Characters

I have, I must confess, a compulsion to create a demonic number of OCs - you need only look at my blog to see this. But as with canon characters, some OCs are more prominent than others. Most of my OCs are Spectrum personnel, because I started working on this fic as just a CSatM fic before I began besieging the setting with Tracy Men.

The de facto main character for the early, Spectrum centric portions is Nogami Riku AKA Captain Sable. They are part of a wave of new personnel specifically recruited for the war against the Mysterons. Through RIku and the other newbies I want to interrogate how I think Spectrum functions, how they deal with non-Mysteron threats, and the ethical struggle inherent to drafting new blood into a war that's almost impossible to win.

Some of them are more fleshed out than others, but throughout my work you will see references to;

- Captain Sable (Nogami Riku)

- Lieutenant Yellow (Antonina 'Tosia' Kędzierska)

- Captain Teal (Calais Manousakis)

- Captain Indigo ("Basmat")

- Sonata Angel (Hazeema Rizvi)

- Toccata Angel (Tien Anh Mai)

- Requiem Angel (Davi Ayres Zeferino)

As for iR, only two OCs of mine have found their way there so far, and even they have at least some interaction with Spectrum;

- Larkin Carver-Grey

- Morgan Riesner

Larkin is a victim of Mysteronisation who inexplicably woke up as themselves again like Captain Scarlet himself. They don't want to join Spectrum so they end up in iR (who are in-the-know) and their struggle to integrate is the subject of a whole fic. Morgan, meanwhile, is set up to be one of two protagonists for a planning-state Psychics plot I want to do in the later part of my timeline, around late 2069 into 2070 if my dates stay consistent. The other OC for that is Silver Avalos, another powerful psychic found by Spectrum during their investigations. They aren't so easily categorised and interact with iR and Spectrum pretty equally.

State of Technology

Here is where things start leaning more towards the reboots. In my AU I basically take the efforts the newer shows took to modernise all the tech and apply it to the TOS base I'm working on, either presented as-is or as constant iteration by Brains/Spectrum's R&D Department.

I'm still more comfortable with OG Scarlet's terminology, e.g SPVs are still called SPVs but they function more like NCS's Rhinos. All the new Spectrum vehicles introduced in the CG show are present as well. This is not just because I am desperate for Riku to ride around one of those sick as hell bikes from NCS, what are you talking about?

The Thunderbirds are presented as their TAG versions, with all the extra functionality they have being explained as Brains constantly updating his own designs over the last 2-3 years of iR's operations. Because if that man isn't busy working on something he starts scaling the walls of the villa.

How Psychics Work

Before we begin: This part of my AU is still very much a work in progress so it's subject to change and updates as I continue writing fic and coming up with new ideas. A lot of it is still up in the air at the moment.

In this AU, low-level ESP is a known condition that can be managed and easily lived with. It's rare, but not terribly rare, and in most cases usually just manifests as an overly powerful empathetic sense, or far above-average memory retention. Stronger forms do exist but by and large, dramatic powers of telepathy or "mind bending" capabilities do not naturally occur without focused training, and it's still a point of contention if physical space manipulations such as telekinesis are even possible.

One lesser known psychic phenomenon is the psychic pair bond. Psychics can, with practice and focus, form low-level permanent bonds with each other, usually in pairs or groups of three (any more and it starts to become difficult to manage) and through these bonds, the participants can share their powers with each other. Alongside training, and carefully sliding the scale of power back and forth between them, psychic bonds can become incredibly powerful, but it is not without its dangers. If one part of a bond dies, and their power was being shared with another bond member at the time, that power is permanently shunted to the remaining psychic. This can cause neurological issues from the psychic having to store the increased power on their own, and deep psychological trauma from losing their bond. The best way for a broken-bond psychic to manage this is by forming a new bond with another psychic to help shoulder the burden, but this can be an emotionally taxing endeavour for all parties involved.

Psychic Cold War

Preceding and running alongside the last global conflict at the turn of the 2040s, a secret psychic cold war was being waged. Governments across the world were secretly funding research into human psychic capabilities, naturally for military application above all else. Ren Kyrano and his twin brother were natural psychics recruited into a secret programme called ESPR, which was studying the applications of psychic pair bonds. As twins, the Kyranos made an excellent pair bond who excelled in their training. Eventually, however, they would turn on the organisation that "created" them and, with the help of one Jeff Tracy and a few others, would set in motion the downfall of ESPR and several other psychic war projects across the world. Cleaning up the aftermath of the psychic cold war is still being done to this day, with a lot of the work falling on Spectrum. Many of the scientists who worked on these less-than-ethical experiments would go to ground to avoid prosecution, only to be found later with the discovery of Morgan, a powerful psychic created from forcibly engineering pair bond death to give her the capabilities of several trained psychics.

Origin of The Hood

When the inevitable falling out occurred between the Kyrano brothers, Ren used all his strength to forcibly sever their pair bond, having to shunt all of his own psychic powers away for it to work. This left Ren with at least some amount of neurological damage, the loss of most of his capabilities, and the belief that he killed his own brother. In truth, the man who would become The Hood survived this incident and managed to escape, having taken on all of Ren's powers. This is why The Hood's mind manipulation in TOS is so potent; he's running two psychic soldiers' worth of power. It's also why Jeff and Ren never clock something else is going on with the latter's collapses and other health issues. That sort of thing isn't entirely uncommon with Ren, as he's been living with the consequences of his brother's "death" ever since.

Foxes are perhaps second only to cats with their devotion to their pantheon of living gods. These gods are usually bound to an area over a specific thing and can be communed with if so desired, although they tend to be rather fickle as to whom they speak with. They do not tend to give prophecy, but will send warnings in the form of dreams. These gods are present so long there are foxes, but will leave an area if it becomes too hostile for foxes to exist within. Adept fox kits will be "blessed" by one of these gods if they show particular promise. Foxes do have an afterlife, but it is rarely spoken of as it's considered taboo.

Raccoons don't have gods so much as they have a list of virtues that, if a raccoon expresses them in life, gives them an air of superiority that makes them closer to epitomizing that virtue in death. Survival, stealth, flexibility, and fierceness are one of many virtues. Raccoons tend to make up their own lore very frequently, so it changes from individual to individual. There is no whole "truth" when it comes to these masked bandits, and whethere they have someplace to go to after they die is considered unimportant as most raccoons believe that they'll live forever anyway.

Most solitary animals (cougar, lynx, bobcat, wolverine, etc.) lack faith, as it would not be advantageous for them to do so. Lacking social bonds, there exists no need to share verbal experiences or to relate something to such as gods. Without belief, the realm does not exist. 

Wolves, in spite of being incredibly social animals, also don't have much in the way of theistic belief. Their beliefs ride solely on the family unit and their family which came before them (so on and so forth), meaning that well-established packs, merged packs, or lone wolf pairs who manage to make a pack of their own can have quite extensive backgrounds. A growing pup is expected to learn the ancestry of their parents and grandparents, although it is greatly preferred to know further back. Verbal recollections of history and stories are also extremely important and told, sometimes, by way of howling. Their afterlife is actually pretty similar to Starclan, although it's said to merge frequently with the living world so they can run in the steps of their pack. 

Feral dogs, while rare, take on commonalities to wolves in their social and belief structure. It is a bastardized version, however, as feral dogs don't have as tight of family-based society. Domestic dogs, meanwhile, mostly look up to their owners in a kind of reverent loyalty, but to describe looking upon humans as gods would be too generous of a concept.