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Ultimate Furry Crossover: An Adult Choose Your Own Adventure

Background Information 6: Dark Space

By Gideon Kalve Jarvis

Nobody really likes to talk about Dark Space. The region is right there, out on the fringes of the Sol Imperium, the Magical Realm, and the Aniverse, surrounding it all, lying in wait. While not a legitimate factor in Selected Universe politics, Dark Space is the most powerful illegitimate factor in SU politics anywhere.

Whenever somebody just can't fit into the rest of the SU, they eventually end up in Dark Space. And when somebody ends up in Dark Space, they usually spend the rest of their time casting envious eyes toward the more prosperous, populous regions of space, waiting, watching. Outcasts of all sorts live in Dark Space, and the region is a haven for outlaws, criminals, renegades, and warmongers of every type and description imaginable. No race is unrepresented among the scum of Dark Space, and some are more represented than others.

As for government, the rule of the strong is the default state in Dark Space. Those who have power and brains and the will to use them ruthlessly take control of those weaker than themselves. This state of affairs has actually resulted in the formation of several powerful criminal organizations. The most powerful of all these organizations is ruled by the species known to the rest of the SU as the Space Pirates, so named because, without exception, their insect-like species is utterly devoted to the pillaging of the space lanes, until finally they were declared general enemies to the entire rest of the SU's species, a state made even worse by their rampant use of phazon, a deadly mutagenic substance with unpredictable warping effects, which has been banned in the entire rest of the SU. Ruled by Lord Ridley, a powerful space dragon, and his primary strategist, Mother Brain, the Space Pirates maintain a semblance of order in Dark Space, at least when they feel like it. Most of the time, however, they let the bottom feeders do as they please, and form alliances with those strong enough to be worth their time.

The Space Pirates, however, are not the only power in Dark Space. Also present are the remnants of the Toad Empire's military forces, led by the Air Marshal. These dregs of a fallen military force have allied themselves with the exiled General Scales, formerly of Dinosaur Planet before his run-in with Fox McCloud of the StarFox team, and the Cerinian princess, Krystal. Bereft of the motivating force of the megalomaniac artificial intelligence, KOMPLEX, the Toads have proven easily dominated by General Scales and his saurian forces, who also find themselves free agents, thanks to the demise of Andross, their former shadow ruler before his destruction (again) by the StarFox team.

One of the more dangerous individuals in Dark Space is the man known as Julian Ivo Robotnik. Different from his variant counterpart, the Eggman found in the Aniverse (actually an escapee from an alternate dimension), the corpulent cyborg Robotnik is a terrible tinkerer noted for sadism and a love for enslaving others. This enslavement typically takes place through roboticization, a process that transforms its subjects into mentally pliable cybernetic organisms through a controlled field of energy and nanites, channeled through specialized machines designed for the procedure. After being defeated on Mobius, one of the planets of the Aniverse, allowing the restoration of its monarchy, Robotnik has become a mad scientist in residence for the forces of Dark Space, providing robots and other machines for other factions while he waits for his next big chance at becoming a conqueror again.

One of the very few forces that stands against the miscreants and villains of Dark Space is the one-person army known as Samus Aran. There is some mystery behind Aran's identity, as this individual generally remains encased in her suit of high-tech battle armor, and does most communicating through electronic means. Samus Aran's armor is one of the most advanced personal battlesuits found anywhere in the SU, and its means of creation are unknown and possibly not reproducible at all, given currently available technology in the Aniverse and the Sol Imperium, though the Realm of Magic might be able to pull off a magic-powered version, given an opportunity. Whatever the mysterious Aran's origins, however, it is known that this lone bounty hunter lives primarily in a personal gunship designed to meet all the needs of a single occupant. Maintaining such a mobile base of operations allows Samus Aran to stay right on the edge of Dark Space, always ready to head into its depths to engage in another mission against the dangerous criminals who live there. Samus Aran is known to especially relish missions that involve Space Pirates, and while this lone bounty hunter may take prisoners when facing other opponents, Space Pirates never receive any mercy from Samus Aran. The Space Pirates have picked up on this animosity from the mysterious bounty hunter, and their rank and file members have built up a mythology surrounding Samus Aran, regarding her with fear and awe, though not enough to avoid any opportunity to kill the bounty hunter, should there be any chance to do so.

While Dark Space tends to attract the dregs and villains of just about every other series out there, when those villains aren't presently engaged in their villainy within a given region of space or specific planet, there is one series that is specific to Dark Space, due to its focus on fallen worlds overrun by evil, and isolation in the face of overwhelming opposition:

Metroid