#overlanders

Oh, right, we never have heard what happened to the queen.

Baby Geoffrey and his dad.

Antoine's fathaire.

Uncle Chuck, I'm guessing?

!!!???

Perhaps that hooded fox wizard that Knuckles talked to several issues ago???

Sandy and Iris, an English couple who had ridden out to India on a BMW motorcycle and sidecar combination ..

cricket chirp

Heh, yeah, that's to be expected, but what can I say? I like to dwell on stuff. Anyway, one of the least popular and most redundant reveals in the old Archie Sonic book was that Overlanders were in fact a separate species from humans and were essentially 'Mobian Humans' the way Sonic is a 'Mobian Hedgehog'. This came about as a way to sudden explain the presence of 'humans' when the Sonic Adventure rolled around, but the supposed difference between the two species- humans having five digits while Overlanders have four- was never, ever consinstently enforced, and it remains one of the most unneeded, self-inflicted injuries in the book.

Likewise, with the emergence of said humans and the United Federation, a curious irony arises in which it seems that, according to the map, the heart of the United Federation is located in what used to be Europe rather than in what used to be North America. It seems like a puzzling development given that you'd expect these 'descendant' nations to occupy the same rough space as their predecessors, so, what gives?

Well, I had me an idea that can explain that, while getting rid of the whole 'Overlanders are Mutant Humans' thing… while explaining the origins of Overland, and how the Overland eventually led to the United Federation.

Anyway, it goes like this.

As You Know, in the face of the imminent Xorda Genocide in the 21st century, the governments of the world created a desperate attempt to preserve humanity in the form of the Hidden City Initiative, which resulted in a number of underground cities built ala the Vaults from Fallout. The idea being that a fraction of humanity would be saved and wait out the storm of the Xorda.

Eventually the Xorda arrive and do their thing, gene-bombing the earth into oblivion and reducing all life on the planet into primordial soup. But then, unexpectedly, life re-emerges from this soup, but life forever changed as Mobiankind emerges from the ashes of the old Earth. Their evolution hyper-accelerated, over the course of ten thousand years Earth transforms into Mobius, speedrunning through its own age of Dinosaurs (Mobosaurs), Ice Age (which gave us Mogul), to the rough 'modern' age, along with the emergence of phenomena such as magic and the like.

And all the while, humanity slumbers, deep in the recesses of the Earth… but one day, one of the Hidden Cities suffers a malfunction, and wakes up ahead of schedule. This Hidden City is located under what used to be New York, and its people are forced to adjust to life lived under ground. The old norms of democracy and representative government are suspended in the name of survival, and over the generations the society of this Hidden City becomes a centralized dictatorship with far less emphasis on individual rights. Over time, the surface world takes on a mythical, 'Promised Land' kind of place within the culture of the humans, and is referred to as The Overland. The goal of returning to the Overland is what binds the humans, and one day their hard work pays off when they at last get confirmation that the surface is safe for them to inhabit.

The humans proceed to migrate en-masse to the surface of Mobius, in what used to be the East Coast of the United States. They proceed to spread out and lay claim to the lands, which they naturally dub 'The Overland', and themselves Overlanders. They begin making cities and communities and building industry and ships to explore the rest of the planet… and of course, trouble starts brewing within the nascent Overlander civilization. Within the society of the Hidden City there was always a sizable faction of people who believed that, once humans returned to the surface, there would be a return to the democratic government of old since they were now living in the land of plenty and wouldn't need to live such controlled lives.

As you can guess, the people who had grown powerful from the Status Quo had other ideas. Overlander civilization becomes split down the middle between the Reformists, who believe old measures are no longer needed and were only ever meant to be temporary, and the Traditionalists, who see no reason to change a way of life that had safeguarded everyone during 'The Dark Age'. Things get tense, and it seems like things might erupt into civil war. Then, news comes back from scouts and explorers about a new land mass off the coast of what used to be Europe, one that didn't exist in the old maps.

A compromise is reached between the two factions- those who support he Traditionalists will remain in Overland, while the Reformists will re-settle in the new lands. A mass exodus ensues, and those humans who migrate across the sea start anew in the new lands, and in time they will eventually become the United Federation as they establish contact with other re-emerged human civilizations across the former Old World.