GOB Genesis

World of Balatroon story

The smell, the sound... it was all too much. For quite some time, there was a glimmer of hope. But that was no longer the case — a world consumed by fire, by disorder. Governments shattered, and criminals roamed free. The last of the safe havens were ready to fall, and it was only a matter of time. However, it was not always so. There was once peace, and the Great Species lived as one. All enjoyed times of incredible prosperity. Until that one moment that changed everything. The moment of unimaginable greed. Greed - a word to remember.

"Get the fuck off of me!" yelled Dr. Rev Regor as he pushed himself away from the Bear, trying to hold him back. It was the third time he tried to break free of the Bear's grasp, and this time, he was successful. Nothing stood in his path; the portal was all his. He ran towards it, fast and daringly, as any Bull would. But right before he could reach it, he felt a tightness around his left ankle and noticed the end of a whip grabbing him firmly and preventing him from advancing further. The Bear pulled the whip, dropping the Bull to the ground. As Dr. Rev Regor tried to stand up and free himself of the whip, the Bear lunged at him, and then it was too late. They were both gone, and the portal was shut.

But let's take a few steps back. There lived two brilliant scientists among the Great Species, one was named Dr. Rev Regor, who belonged to the Bull faction, and the other was his partner, a Bear known as Dr. Otomakan. There was peace between the two clans, so they decided to nominate the best minds of their respective groups to participate in the greatest challenge of their time, traveling through spacetime. It was deemed an unfeasible task for many centuries until a team of researchers stumbled upon a peculiar element on one of the last remaining uninhabited lands - a peninsula with a mostly-dormant volcano in its center. They called this element Troonshard, a name derived from the volcano Mt. Balatroon. After that, many years passed until the first being, a Bull, accidentally discovered its primary utility. Not the smartest Bull of the clan, rightfully named Dumbass, he was messing around with a tiny speck of Troonshard at the top of the volcano when he dropped it into the exposed magma and noticed a strange cloud-like shape appear into which strands of magma seemed to disappear. Little did he know, Dumbass just discovered time travel.

Fast forward a decade, exploring time travel became the paramount activity for scientists. Led by Dr. Rev Regor and Dr. Otomakan, the teams experimented with small-time portals that they could conjure by placing small objects into them. Some of these objects seemed never to return while others were observed to have traveled back in time as much as, wait for it... 7 seconds. Not a very impressive number, but it was enough to garner global interest in these experiments. However, it was kind of all a lie. The two doctors had been secretly developing a different solution parallel to the public experiments, one that granted them free roam into the past, as much as decades back. They knew this technology could be dangerous and give immense power to the wrong beings, so they kept the best of it between the two of them. And this had turned out to be a great decision as one day they noticed that upon return to the present, Dr. Rev Regor had inherited a mutation of something familiar, one of the objects their teams had been sending back to the past - a rotten, zombie-like sphere that now replaced his right eye.

"What the fuck happened there?" asked Dr. Otomakan in a puzzled tone. So not only was this technology dangerous in terms of power, but now clearly also capable of mutating the beings using it, in totally unpredictable ways. This changed everything. "We must drop this research. It can only end poorly..." urged Dr. Otomakan. He started gathering files into a massive bunch before setting them on fire. Dr. Rev Regor, on the other hand, stood there in disbelief, frozen out of both confusion and curiosity. He turned his head to the left and observed the other doctor frantically unplugging all the equipment. And that's when it all went to shit. "STOP!" yelled the Bull doctor as he rushed toward the Bear in an attempt to prevent him from furthering the damage to the lab. The Bear rightfully refused and pushed back; there was no way he could further test Troonshard as it could easily have brought devastation and ruin to the entire planet. But Dr. Rev Regor was not ready to give it all up. Deep down inside, he craved the potential power. He wanted to see where it could go. The doctors scuffled, quite brutally too, as all Bulls and Bears were easily capable of doing. During the fighting, one of the doctors fell onto the dials of the machine and set the date to 9,696 years in the past, coincidentally 200 years before the Great Eruption of Mt. Balatroon. The Bull doctor caught a glimpse of the date setting but he didn't have a choice. Dr. Otomakan would have ruined everything. He needed to escape. So the half-defeated Bull doctor took a leap of faith and rushed into the portal... but he didn't manage to escape alone. They were now both trapped in time. And that's where the story gets really absurd.

Dr. Otomakan opened his eyes to see a wooden ceiling on top of him and felt around to realize he was lying on something that resembled a bed. The walls were wooden too and there was not a single sign of anything technologically advanced; everything was really bare-bones. A fellow Bear walked into his room and asked, "Ok, ok, ok?". That prompted the doctor to ask where he was, what was going on, but every reply was simple and quite meaningless. A bunch of 'Ok's and head nods. Well, this Bear clearly wasn't very sophisticated. The doctor walked into another room, a much bigger one, which contained several more Bears. But to his disappointment, the others were also quite stupid; he wouldn’t acquire any meaningful information from them. He ran out of the wooden structure to see an entire town of similar buildings, immediately understanding that he traveled in time to an ancient, uncivilized society. Making matters only worse, he felt a strange sensation in his mouth. There were no mirrors anywhere, so he rushed to the closest body of water he could find and observed himself in the reflection. "Well, that’s weird," he said to himself. His teeth were sparkling gold, one of those mutations the doctors encountered earlier. Frightened by the idea that other mutations could have occurred, he ran without much thought, as far away from the town as he could. Growing tired from the run, he settled beside a lake and rested for the night.

Some time had passed, during which Dr. Otomakan managed to travel around the peninsula and grew familiar with the locales. One place he had not yet travelled to was the other side of the river, as it had been impossible to swim across. The river divided the peninsula in two and was ferocious - deep with a strong current. However, on this particular day, the Bear doctor happened to stumble upon a small bridge of rocks that allowed him to make the cross. Immediately after making it to the other side, he was surprised by angry Bulls, and they weren't acting friendly. They ran after him, and he was captured. Moments after, a shadow emerged on the ground, and a familiar figure stood before him - it was Dr. Rev Regor, or rather what was left of him after the numerous mutations that spread across his body. The Bull doctor gathered several of his minions around and yelled up into the sky, "I told you it would happen!". What he was subtly referring to was not something Dr. Otomakan could have predicted. Apparently, the Bear doctor had fallen into a coma for two months upon arrival to this ancient land while on the Bulls' side of the peninsula, Dr. Rev Regor began taking advantage of his fellow beings’ simple, uneducated nature and corrupting their minds. He made it evident to all the Bulls that their lives were in danger. The Bears would one day come and take over their lands, killing their fellow-creatures. And the only way to prevent this was to acquire as much Troonshard as possible. Little did they know, this was a blatant lie. The doctor sought the element’s power and would stop at nothing to get it all for himself. So he convinced his peers that this was the only way. They established groups to search for the Troonshard while simultaneously building defenses within the towns located along the river. Dr. Rev Regor was ready to take over the lands. He was readying for war.

And he most likely would have succeeded if not for one simple, cocky mistake. He let Dr. Otomakan go. "Run to your pathetic Bears, I don't care. I'm coming for you all, this will be fun!" screamed the Bull doctor, with a devilish, evil look on his face. Greed and hunger for power flowed through his veins. He wasn't thinking practically anymore, he was consumed by it. Freeing the Bear doctor was a foolish move; he greatly underestimated him. Dr. Rev Regor seemed to have forgotten that he was not superior. They were equal in intelligence and persistence. The Bear doctor was more than capable of rivaling his conquest, and that's exactly what he did. This moment sparked the beginning of decades of brutal wars between the factions, and their relentless searches for Troonshard. One doctor strived to exploit it, while the other one sought to destroy it. You now enter the lands of the Balatroon peninsula, lands ridden by chaos and fire. And you must choose a side. Are you going to support the Goons of Dr. Rev Regor or their rivals on the Northern side, the Goons of Dr. Otomakan? Whichever you choose, remember that it may all be in vain, as the volcano in the center is destined to erupt within 200 years... and there will be no escaping it.