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A couple of FFVII setting riffs

Agrippa

Pro Adventurer
#1. Midgar Noir: I first got this idea when Archer: Dreamland aired. Shin-Ra Co. is still powerful in this setting just not all-powerful. It's just a major player in a crooked game instead of being the only game in town. Zack and Cloud are a pair of ex-Army pals who've resurfaced in Midgar as budding young PIs after giving a dangerous new mob boss the slip 5 years after running into him. This after getting word from Cloud's girl Tifa, that she'd settled down in the big city, working for/with Aerith.
Other differences from the original setting
  1. Shin-Ra is not the de facto goverenment of this setting. It's just a very influential military contractor, with the SOLDIER program being one of those contracts.
  2. Shin-Ra does not have an army of it's own, just some largely ex-government security forces with some new recruits. That's what the Turks of this setting are the elite of.
  3. General Heidegger is an Army general not a Shin-Ra board member, but he is insanely corrupt and takes a lot of kickbacks from Shin-Ra for shilling for them. If this, and other abuses of power to benefit himself and Shin-Ra, were to become public, he'd face decades in the brig, if not lined up against a wall and shot for treason.
  4. Aertih's birth mother Iflana survived the injuries she suffered escaping captivity with her daughter. Badly injured as she was Iflana could still walk, or more accurately hobble along with some help. Thankfully a kindly young widow shouldered a limping Iflana as she guided mother and frightened daughter to their new home, the Gainsborough residence in Midgar's slums. This was naturally Elmyra Gainsborough, or 'Auntie Elle' as Aerith grew to call her.
  5. The mob boss Zack and Cloud were running from is in fact Sephiroth. He's still angling for godhood, he's just taking a different route than in canon. In this version Sephiroth is attempting to build up a base of support that he can use as a launching pad to becoming The Planet's immortal god emperor. That support base being organized crime. This Sephiroth is a superhuman mob boss/cult leader with a god complex and enough personal power to back it up.
  6. Since Zack and Cloud spent the past five years shaking Boss Sephiroth's tail instead of being tortured and experimented on by Hojo in Shinra Mansion, Cloud has no SOLDIER enhancements. He's mostly a ranged/gun-based fighter with shooting based Limit Breaks. Cloud favors long-barreled rifles.
  7. A few years ago Aerith asked a favor from Zack while he was on leave. Being both a gentleman and ready and willing to do most anything for his gal, Zack said, "Sure thing sweetheart, just name and I'll go do it. Even if it takes walking barefoot through Hell." "It won't be that bad," Aerith said with her sly yet loving little grin, "I just need you to scope out mom and dad's old place. From back before Hojo came and took my dad from us, and stole six years of our lives. A place called Icicle Inn." There Zack was let into the old Feremis house. He snooped around for a bit through the ransacked home. There he found dust-covered books on math, chemistry and biology, along with a pricey and high quality chemistry set, which Iflana told him her late husband bought for Aerith for when she got older. Last but not least, he found notes and recordings, some of them messages from a father to his daughter in case the worst happened, and others, enough info to put Shin-Ra in some real hot water. All this in his mind Zack decides on two things. One, all of this needs to get back to Aerith and her mother. Two, 'I'm done working for Shin-Ra. My contract might not be up yet, but as soon as it is, I'm turning my back on this damned company, and not a moment too soon.'
  8. Iflana, Aerith and Elmyra greatfuly took in everything Zack brought them, shelving the books in Aerith's room and setting up the chemistry kit in the old church the young Cetra girl uses as her private sanctum. The notes Gast left for his daughter Aerith were just that, messages for his daughter, which now safely reside in her room, tucked away in a lockbox when she isn't busy looking through them. But the company dirty laundry, that's just a gold mine there. With the four of the seated around Elmyra's kitchen table, Aerith, her mother Iflana, Auntie Elle and Zack, Aerith spoke. "You know what this is," she said,"what dad left for us," young miss Feremis says, holding her mother's hand. "A knife to Shin-Ra's throat! First to make them back off and give us what we need to not just survive, but thrive and be able to fightback if they get stupid. And later, to go for the kill. Those rat bastards deserve it." Thus a lawsuit was drawn up against the company after Zack left for his final mission. Naturally Shin-Ra's response was swift as it was final. They paid up almost immediately. A payoff was least painful and cheapest option they had, they already had feds poking around over claims of faulty wartime equipment (which the documents Zack, Aerith and co. graciously leaked), they don't need a public lawsuit and the feds knocking down their doors.
  9. Hojo no longer works for Shin-Ra. This was a result of an intense disagreement over corporate's decision to back off Iflana and her daughter, due to risk of law suit and the public attention it would bring. When told of this Professor Hojo suggested sending a group Shin-Ra security, Turks included, to retrieve the pair, only to be reminded of the sheer carnage Iflana unleashed while escaping with her daughter, only confirming the theory the Cetra can perform magic without use of materia. That and Aerith herself had developed a reputation for elemental fury against the less savory creatures that stalk the alleys of Midgar's slums and it's junkyards. What Hojo said next was nothing less than both sociopathic and foolhardy. "Then we just send in more men, President Shinra", the in-house madman says, "Let the two Cetras burn out their magical reserves on killing the first wave or so, allowing us to much more easily subdue them. Think of these men," referring to both standard security and the Turks, "as cannon fodder or rather Cetra fodder, I do. They're nothing more then dumb beasts we hire to follow our orders." When firing Hojo, President Shinra said in a jocular tone of voice, "Don't worry Hojo, this isn't me throwing you to the wolves. If I really was throwing you to the wolves, I'd cut your fucking throat first. Have a nice day."
  10. It was a bit of a shock seeing a young couple and their two children living where the Feremis' and Mrs. Gainsborough had been just five years prior, but they quickly told them of the trio that had sold, practically given away this house to them, and how they moved out to a townhouse several blocks down. The wife looked at the two young men at their door and said, "Is one of you a Zack Fair?" "Yes ma'am, I am," Zack says. "Good, because one of the the former residents here, a young woman named Aerith said to give directions to her new home, along with a message, 'I know we've been apart for some time, but that doesn't now. What matters is that you're here now, and that's all that matters. Please come back to me Zack. You'll always have a place at my side.'" As they reach the townhouse they see a towncar slowing to a stop with the chauffeuse saying, "Still don't want me to open your door for you miss Feremis, right?" "Ugh, for 1,506th time since I hired you no, I can open my own car door, thank you very much," Aerith says, "Just call me Aerith, okay Tifa."
#2. Crazy Noisy Bizarre Planet: Sort of a high school AU mixed with JJBA, Invader Zim, Archer, The Venture Brothers and some of the Amazon adaptation of The Boys plus some off world character crossover. It's going to be much closer to real-world geography with certain FFVII locations stirred into the mix. Three years ago, a then 13 year-old Aerith Gainsborough met a mysterious girl, about two years older than. A girl with ashen hair tied behind her head and eyes as green as Aerith's, and clad in an off-white tunic, brown pants and leather boots, with a longsword strapped to her back. This girl's name is Ciri, and she's a long way from home. Aerith and Ciri become fast friends, more like sisters really. Three years pass with Ciri as a part of the Gainsborough household, helping Elmyra around the house, taking in the kindly ex-school teacher's lessons along with Aerith, and teaching her surrogate sister all the Witcher skills and tricks she knew. Along with a tall, dark-haired and handsome boyfriend for Aerith by the name of Zack Fair.

It's been three years since the two met, and now they, along with Elmyra and two more girls recently found living on the streets, are leaving Midgar and flying halfway across country to new life and school. All thanks to the goodness of man whose young daughter, Jolyne, told him all about them. That man's name is Jotaro Kujo, and he's bringing in all the resources of The Speedwagon Foundation he can to help them. So now Aerith, the rest of the girls and Elmyra have a new life in Colorado, going to the this strange new school with its teachers such as Professor Membrane, Dr. Sheila Fitzcarldo A.K.A. Dr. Mrs. The Monarch and even Jonas Venture Jr., from time to time. Their new friends at this school include Abbiejean "A.J." Malory Kane-Archer, Gaz Membrane and somehow those dumb ass Venture boys Hank and Dean.

Enemies
  • Hojo, and by extension Shin-Ra Electrical Company
  • Father Enrico Pucci
  • Anyone A.J.'s mom and dad have pissed off
  • Eredin Bréacc Glas, King of the Wild Hunt
  • Zim, through Gaz' brother Dib
  • Scarlett and co. (schoolyard bullies)

Factions
Other differences from the original FFVII setting
  1. More closely follows real-world geography, so you have Japan and other East Asian countries instead of Wutai, so no Yuffie. Instead you get Jotaro Kujo, Josuke Higashikata, Rohan Kishibe, Okuyasu Nijimura, Koichi Hirose, Yukako Yamagishi and more.
  2. Shin-Ra still has the same type and quality of resources as in canon. However, they're "merely" a multinational corporation in this setting, not a world dominating superpower. All the other factions mentioned above are of roughly equal status, power and influence to Shin-Ra. One of these factions, The Speedwagon Foundation, being a goddamn charitable trust/endowment, albeit one with a paranormal research department with vampire/zombie killing superweapons.
  3. One of Aerith's new teachers was her late mother's college roommate and friend since highschool. Sheila even arranged for an official Guild sanctioned protection plan for the Feremis household, it's just that Shin-Ra got there first.

I have more ideas for these two setting riffs, but I'll just post this thread first. I've been at this for two whole days, just not two days straight. I've being doing more than just sitting at a computer all this time.
 
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Firstone33

Pro Adventurer
AKA
Daniel
Neat! So basically it would be a gangster like series actually ffvii was original going to be something like that it was going to be set in New York City and about detective Joe aka cloud original concept and that shinra was more or less a mafia of sorts
 

Agrippa

Pro Adventurer
Neat! So basically it would be a gangster like series actually ffvii was original going to be something like that it was going to be set in New York City and about detective Joe aka cloud original concept and that shinra was more or less a mafia of sorts
Thanks, I'll have to look that up to be sure though. With that said...

More details
Midgar Noir
  1. Boss Sephiroth is a ruthless and vicious mobster/cult leader with a massive god complex. He's also an utterly non-hypocritical proponent of clean living to his men. He only drinks alcohol on special occasions, even he can nurse a glass of wine or champagne over the course of an evening, rarely finishing it. He doesn't smoke, use recreational drugs or have sex. Outside of his daily business a mob boss/cult leader Sephiroth lives a rather Spartan lifestyle. The Silver Don is a highly organized murderous psychopath, but he's a highly organized murderous psychopath without any vices.
  2. He wields a Mackelson sub-machine gun, A.K.A. a Mackie gun, but he much prefers his magic/Materia and his nodachi, Masamune, finding firearms "too inelegant" for his tastes.
  3. One of the first places Aerith had Tifa drive her to was the old, rundown Sector 5 church she used to spend much of her time in. There the two of them talked about their lives growing up and how they ended where they are. As they're talking over drinks, Scotch on the rocks for Aerith and seltzer water for Tifa, Tifa brings up the time as a little girl when she asked Cloud, 'When we're older, and when you're a famous SOLDIER, all caps or regular, if I'm ever trapped or in trouble, promise you'll come save me.' "He said yes," Tifa added. "Sounds like a swell guy Tifa. Both got a couple of real nice guys looking for us. I just hope we get to see them again in this life, that's all," a tearful Aerith adds with a wistful half-whisper.
  4. As the night, and the two young women's talk, goes on, Aerith pick up and opens a box saying, "Hey Tif, wanna smoke. I roll it myself." "Huh," a puzzled Tifa says, "uh, my uncle died coughing up a lung from smoking." Aerith responds, "Let me guess, that was tobacco, right?" "Yeah, it was," a saddened Tifa replies. "Don't worry then Tifa," a sympathetic Aerith says, "This is refer, I grow it here myself." Looking at the neatly rolled joint Tifa sighs with a half grin and says, "Can't hurt to try it."
  5. Aerith and Tifa, occasionally with Iflana and Elmyra, make frequent trips to the slums Aerith grew up in to treat the sick and injured of Sector 5, feed the hungry and fight off the various gangs and literal monsters that threaten the poorest parts of Midgar. Not for fame or glory, but simply out of the goodness of their hearts. Elmyra is never part of the fighting, not if everybody else can help it.
  6. Naturally Zack and Cloud get roped into this after they find their way to Aerith and Tifa. No real complaints here.
  7. Aerith is trying to grow fruits and vegetables in mineral nutrient solution as a way of saving on soil and improving yields. She got the idea from going through her father's chemistry and botany books. She started getting results four years ago.
Crazy Noisy Bizarre Planet
  1. One of the two girls that Aerith and Ciri met, and convinced Elmyra to take in, just weeks before meeting Jolyne and moving to their new home, was a few days shy of her 16th birthday, or "nameday" as she called it. About the same height and build as Aerith, but her long hair was silvery, even more so than Ciri's, with what seem to be golden highlights. The girl's eyes were a deep violet, like Yennifer's, Ciri noted. The other, taller, one is about 13 with auburn hair and sea-blue eyes. Aerith and Ciri quickly decide that these girls cannot be left on the streets any longer than they've already been, it just wouldn't be safe for them.
  2. Aerith and Ciri took a few odd jobs to help Elmyra, and for some spending money of course. One of these was at a small independent bookstore, where they worked cleaning the store and shelving books and other merchandise. They got paid $11 an hour plus $6 in in-store credit, along with one bargain bin/clearance item per week. This how Aerith managed to get her 18 volume set of Rohan Kishibe's Pink Dark Boy, since it wasn't selling well before she started recommending it to customers. Don't worry people, Aerith and Ciri had the fake IDs for the job. This is in addition to Aerith's flower selling.
  3. Yes, the two girls mentioned in detail #1 are Daenerys Targaryen and Sansa Stark. Daenerys ended up in this word months earlier, before her canon wedding to Khal Droggo. They end up working in the same bookstore Aerith and Ciri, also with fake IDs. Dany uses this to get a copy of The Hidden Life of Wolves and books on needlepoint and embroidery for Sansa's birth/nameday. For her part Sansa spent some of her earnings on enough fabric to sew a new dress for Dany, complete with sewn in dragon wing epaulettes for her upcoming nameday.
  4. Aerith's garden includes more than just decorative flowers for sale. It also contains verbena, hellebore, white myrtle, honeysuckle and more, all reserved for potion brewing. They just need cold storage for the various creature parts or this world's equivalent, which Zack will gladly provide. The pair are attempting to brew less toxic forms of various Witcher potions for their own use with their highschool chemistry books and some college level chemistry that Aerith saved up her in-store credits at work to buy. They're focusing in filtering out the toxic elements of said potions, while retaining their effectiveness. They've had some success on this front.
  5. Aerith and Ciri have also made some blade oils and bombs for themselves and Zack. They've also taken to training Sansa and Dany, which is like pulling teeth with those two, especially Sansa.
  6. Zack is also a fan of Pink Dark Boy.
  7. As soon as Shin-Ra learned of The Speedwagon Foundation relocating Aerith, along with Elmyra, and the three other girls, they panicked. Shin-Ra had just lost track of it's prize, the last known living Cetra. Up until somebody said, "Why don't we just figure out where they went and assign a surveillance team, Turks included, to monitor them."
  8. So as to avoid drawing too much suspicion, Shin-Ra has decided to enroll members of it's SOLDIER program in the same Colorado high school and it's adjoining college to explain the massive company security presence. Out of universe this is to explain how Zack is involved, aside from Jotaro having the SWF contact his folks in Gongaga and let them know. Also, if you will, imagine taking three young men, with relatively little normal human interaction and shoving them into a normal college. All of them are superpowered. A taciturn lab-raised warrior/commander who can't handle interpersonal relationships, a friendly and seemingly cheerful young man with a (largely) undeserved guilt complex and an egomanical drama nerd that the other drama nerds won't want anything to do with because he's trying too hard.
  9. Not to be outdone, Vought American has announced that two of their flagship heroes will be going the same college. Namely Maeve and John. Yay, Sephiroth and Homelander on the same campus, said no one in-universe.
  10. Shin-Ra, Vought, The Speedwagon Foundation, O.S.I. and the Guild all in one place? It'll be a five conspiracy clusterfuck of truly epic proportions. Pass the popcorn.
  11. Cloud's mom and Tifa's dad sent the two of them to the same high school where Aerith, Ciri, Daenerys, Sansa and Jolyne will be going. The thinking is that it's somewhat close by and they'll get a good education at a school where nothing bad ever happens.
  12. At least three other young Westerosi noble ladies have disappeared from their world, only to and up here. Shireen Baratheon at the Venture compound with Hank and Dean, Arya Stark at the Membrane residence with Gaz and Dib and Myrcella Baratheon at the Archer-Kane household with A.J..
  13. All seven of them, natives to this world included, are headed for the same general school system as Aeirth, Ciri, Dany, Sansa, Jolyne, Zack, Cloud and Tifa. I'll be aging Abbiejean up enough that she could share classes, or at least a campus, with Aerith and Ciri.
 
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