Io Landscape Concept: Pits of Sheol

[S.T.M.P.D]

So after seeing Devstream 107 where DE promised us a planetary landscape where the marks of somewhat hard sci-fi's terraforming would be visible, I started thinking about what other potential cool things could come from half-finished, aborted terraforming projects. Then, after reading a thread wherein the OP said that he just wanted a Corpus hell world like Mustafar or something, I started thinking about an alternate hellish planet which could be used, and then I came up with this whole wacky idea for a landscape for Io, one of the four Galiliean moons of Jupiter and a hell planet through and through.

GEOLOGICAL EXPOSITION DUMP

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The Predecessor Civilizations. The Orokin. The Grineer. The Corpus.

Throughout the history of man as a solar system-faring species, humanity and its offshoot peoples have colonized planet after planet, asteroid after asteroid, turning desolate rocks into beautiful wildernesses, then turning those beautiful wildernesses into overgrown, polluted worlds. Every inch of these worlds has been explored, and colonized, left to flourish or suffer and build their own eight hundred years of history, and not once has a place been left truly pristine, free from terraforming or cracking or anything, really. As wild as it may seem at times, this was once, and will become once again in time, man’s solar system through and through.

Except for Io. Io is a no-go.

And can you blame the Orokin and everyone after them for not taking the planet seriously? Io’s #*!%ed, man. It’s a Late Heavy Bombardment leftover trapped in a tug-of-war between giant Jupiter and its sister Galilean satellites, the surface constantly being ripped apart by volcanism and tectonic upheaval then sewn together again with seams of crystallized sulfur frost and fresh magma, then jammed right in the middle of the plasma belt of the strongest magnetosphere in the system. So: frequent earthquakes, violent volcanism, toxic gases of all kinds, and radiation surges? And to top it all off, a distinct lack of mineral wealth, not even a whole lot of rare-earth metals, or even prime real estate for spaceships to stop off when the Jovian hydrogen mines are just hours away?

Of course the Corpus barely bothered. Of course the Grineer wouldn’t push so far into Corpus space to claim such a useless rock, especially since it’s too far away from its Galilean brethren even for an invaders’ beachhead. When you think about it, it’s a miracle the Orokin even bothered to terraform it at all.

But terraform it they did, albeit barely. The core and mantle were already moving pretty damn quick, too quick if anything, Io’s mantle is quite literally liquid magma where our mantle is just goopy solid rock, so they couldn’t just send a whole bunch of nukes into the crust and wait for the heat to kick in. They had to put two big baryonic fusion reactors on the poles, massive things which, linked up to Orokin magnetic beacons, generated a highly energetic magnetosphere which could block out even the harshest of Jupiter’s whimsies. From there, an atmosphere was seeded, a comet or two smashed into the Colchis Regio, and crude life began to grow on splotches of black basaltic lava even though the volcanoes and the quakes and the fragile soil hadn’t improved any.

But Io had little which other worlds could not provide, and was still too harsh even with terraforming measures taken. There was no desire to knock the world out of orbit, there was really no point to knocking Io into a higher orbit (especially since that tech had only been tested with asteroids that wouldn’t trigger some sort of cascade effect with other moons - what, the Orokin wondered, could Io do to Europa if knocked the wrong way?).

So Io became a prison planet. It was where criminals who could not, or would not, be reformed were taken - since the Grineer filled the few roles for manual labor which were needed elsewhere- and condemned to eke out miserable existences maintaining terraforming tech the rest of their lives. Unable to leave, denied high technology, Io’s prisoners didn’t even need wardens. They lived out their lives there, expanded settlements beyond their initial boundaries, had children under radiation shielding, were denied care of those children in favor of a sort of collective-raising system, began staging raids with limited military technology against other settlements to garner favors with their distant wardens. The hardiest ones, in the nastiest parts of the planet, became something like monsters, as selective genetic mutilation rendered their skin jet-black and plastic-like to keep the radiation out. Perhaps there was more to it - perhaps the Orokin did other things there - but nothing is remembered of them.

When the fall came, the Iotians’ situation rapidly worsened as supplies were cut off for good. As terraforming deteriorated, the Iotian settlements soon militarized (with what few scraps of stuff they had), and sold some of those who knew Orokin terraforming tech into slavery for the Corpus in exchange for technology. They engaged in war with one another for the rights for this crater or that lava plain even as that land became poisoned by an upsurge in suppressed volcanism.

Now, Io is a nasty, nasty place, inhabited only by the last straggling tribes of settlers, Corpus researchers loyal to Alad V, the Red Veil’s elite operatives… and the Infested.

Visually, Io is a hell planet through and through, with a sky dominated by the sheer vastness of Jupiter filtered through a dark red atmosphere with green and blue clouds periodically belching up from the ground on the skyline The ground is a mix of the sickly yellow of sulfurous soil, with some orange here and there, and the black of basaltic lava flows in certain choice locations. Terrain is uneven, alternating between flat plains, mesas, sudden upheavals, volcanic vents, lava fields, and their cooled remains.

The world is dying, twisted back to its natural state by the very terraforming techniques which were supposed to claim it. Life is still present, in the forms of hardy plants and fungi, but so much of it seems to be bleached and dead already. Entire fossilized forests are not uncommon finds on the top of hills where mass wasting hasn’t ripped away soil.

Radiation now comes in massive flux surges, when a naturally occurring event whereby Io’s magnetosphere links up with Jupiter’s upper atmosphere via a flux tube of charged particles; due to a more persistent atmosphere, and the malfunctioning magnetosphere generator polarizing along the current of particles, the entire sky is lit up in a psychedelic, multi colored aurora like something out of an 80’s sci-fi poster.

This regularly occurring event, known as a ‘flux surge’, occurs as the area’s level-gating event. Shields are draining constantly, especially in the brightest portions of the map, although health and armor are not affected, except by the usual toxic hazards, which are now doubly potent and last twice as long, and new patches of particularly bright landscape, vast open plains without shade, which will start to zap your health away with Radiation procs. With the whole ground almost bathed in white from the aurora, with lightning accelerating in a gyre of energy around Orokin structures, the Infested now come out in force. From nondescript holes, strange black branch-like structures, like fossilized tentacles, sprout straight up into the air, and Ancients and their swarms begin to cover the landscape. These Infested are faster, stronger, hardier than their early-stage Mutalist counterparts, which cannot take this radiation, and it is against these radiation empowered Infested which you will be battling against as you attempt to root out their black nests - here in the pits of Sheol.

REGIONS OF SOME IMPORTANCE

Spoiler

POE is about 3 x 3 kilometers or less, and Venus promises a 6 x 6 open world. Thus, Sheol is about that same size, since I think that’s around the size of Velen from the Witcher 3 - more than room enough to pack high-density crazy stuff into the same area. Let’s say that this is the Sheol Caldera, a millennia-old volcanic formation in the Colchis Regio (remember, Io’s geology moves fast.)

Base Hub Zone: Kaltras

Black Foothills

Kaltras Lava Flow

Loess Flats

Pandelirium Base

The Warrens

The Cracks

The Boils

Katurga Territory

Dis

Mount Medea

The Forest/The Pit

ENEMIES

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Infested

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Let’s be honest here, what is up with the infested aesthetic? It seems like it oscillates between the more fleshy, grey-with-orange-goop kinda thing which designates younger Mutalist tissue, and the more crooked, aged Ancients, which are strange and interesting unto themselves.

So the Infested here are in two different Strains: Ancient and Conventional.

Conventional Infested are mostly around the Corpus fortress in conventional Infested growths, but even they must shrink into the ground when the flux surge smites the landscape.

Ancient Infested are basically reskinned, more deadly, like Elite Infested, which resemble the twisted matter of regular Ancients, formed of twister black biomatter, no carapaces or colorful growths here, only clean, horrifying purpose. They're vomited out of the ground dozens at a time, and immediately lock on to Tenno, swarming across the Pits to wipe out foolish intruders.
Also worth noting is that, during the Flux Surge, and within the underground parts of Io, Ancients can spawn, then break apart into slithering masses of vines, which reform into double or even triple Ancients!

-Ancient Chargers have glowing red mandible-like mouthparts in place of the teeth they once had, lack the distinctive front upper body armor of the Grineer, and move fast, soundlessly, like Xenomorphs, really. They can climb up walls but can’t cling to them, slinking in and out of choice hiding holes until they swarm the surface of Io in a Flux Surge. Their claws deal slash damage as well as a random base element.

-Elite Ancient Chargers don’t have tentacles in their mouth, but rather two rasping plates of glowing spines which they use to shred Tenno into pieces. They can also rear up to about the height of an ancient, and spit swarms of spines like a machinegun.

-Ancient Leapers have roughly the same model as their regular predecessors, but obviously heavily reskinned to look, y’know, black and grimy, and with newly modeled, thin spindly legs. They crawl aggressively, desperately, when not in assault mode, whereupon they get up on those funky legs of theirs and move only by jumping, like a murderous kangaroo.

-Volatile Ancient Leapers explode in a cloud of hazardous, element-proccing gas when they successfully impact a Tenno, and they only proc the combo elements like Viral or Magnetic.

-Ancient Threshers are Ancients with a prominent giant ring over their head, and strange bony armor plating, making them look like the kind of thing you’d extract the Mios from. And, indeed, they do perform a function kind of like that, as their tentacle-arms have mutated into Mios-size claws which slash and bash and basically turn any battle into Dark Souls, since the only way to kill these suckers is non-ranged melee, striking at weakspots on their back where their armor is weak, They’re very fast attackers, but move slowly.

-Ancient Flayers are gangly ancients based off of the Phage’s general aesthetic, with two pink mandible mouthparts that are used for brief lunge attacks, and tentacle-arms refined into two Viral laser blasters which are autofocused. Attacks are often sweeping, or striking, but rarely just firing a beam at a Tenno; thus, Flayers serve the role a Tech or Heavy Gunner would in Grineer or Corpus battles, except with Phage lasers. Do not underestimate them.

-Ancient Crushers are long-range units which usually carry other Infested units in their arms, then sling them at incredible speeds to smash into Tenno like stones in a trebuchet. If it has no allies available, another Tenno will do just fine.

-Juggernaut Behemoths occasionally spawn during a Flux Surge.

-Artillery Boilers don’t fire spawn pods, but rather just launch Infested Spore and Tar bombs until the entire area is covered in the things.

-Maws are conventional Infested which occupy innocuous spots in the landscape, like pitcher plants or flytraps grown into crevasses and patches of weak land, that will disguise themselves then trap a Tenno in their spiky mouths for rapid disintegration and processing. A Tenno will have to desperately bullet-jump just to stay visible above the surface, but will require the aid of well-targeted melee to actually break free of the thing’s tentacles.

-Mylenoid Bushes are conventional Infested, small tendrils like sea anemones no larger than a Tenno which continuously grow a vast network of electric tripwires that stun a player and alert nearby Infested to their presence. During a flux surge, they ‘bloom’ and cover the entire area nearby them - usually an Infested growth site or hotspot of some sort - with the things.

Corpus

Spoiler

Lothar Private Equity Extractions is an older Corpus group, a loose conglomerate of industrial producers and security contractors nebulously strung together by failed financial sharks. They are essentially nothing in terms of the nobility expected from places like, say, Ganymede, and they certainly don’t have any major holdings within spiritual organizations, and yet now here they are, on Io, in full force, with enough proxies and heavy weaponry to make even Nef Anyo take pause. In fact, Lothar was where Alad V moved most of his assets regarding the Zanuka project after all his run-ins with the Infestation forced him out of the proper Corpus circles. Now, Lothar is considered a Rogue Board operating without permission in the Jovian system, an insurgency in Alad’s name but with him utterly absent.

Why Io, though? What secrets does Alad V have that he ordered a looming, monolithic research tower and a fortress around it to be built just a few kilometers from the giant pit that is Sheol? And who is leading this rogue faction in his absence?
-Crewmen carry their usual weapons, but usually sit distant from the action, with proxies doing most of the actual patrolling.
-There are no Scrambus or Comba - no Corpus elite wants to sit around here for any time at all.
-But there are more Techs than usual, and they’re wearing different types of Corpus armor to boot: Porta, Arca, Dendra, Quaro, all reflecting roles as different breeds of Combat Engineers.
-Regular Techs use their Supras, and throw up different kinds of Osprey from their backpacks. 
-Dendra Techs use reflective energy shields dual-wielded with an Angstrum, a Cycron, or a Serro while occasionally firing Nullifier Grenades. The shield can be placed down to create protective cover like a Blunt, but it is only done at specific choke points, and it’s a proto shield which regenerates over time. Serro wielders use the weapons like spears, thrusting to keep the Tenno at bay.
-Arca Techs use Arca Plasmors, and rush the enemy with their Arca Titrons occasionally to keep the Tenno off balance. They increase the likeliness of a Bursa spawning, and will occasionally heal them, and upgrade them with specific Bursa-appropriate upgrades. If a Bursa is downed, Arca techs can not only ‘revive’ it once via the hacking animation, but double its armor and shielding on top of that!
-Quaro Techs behave much like Corpus Snipers, but are armed with a Ferrox instead, and are not unafraid to throw said Ferrox right into the middle of a crowd of enemies - they switch to a Spectra when disarmed in such a manner. They can also deploy the portable Corpus equivalent of unprotected Ramparts, which fire arcs of energy like an oversized Amprex.
-Porta Techs put down teleporters, obviously, can even throw them like glaives, and use a Penta when they don’t have a teleporter to throw.
-MOAs and Ospreys come in the same variants as always.

 

THINGS TO DO WHICH ARE BOUNTIES AND ALSO OTHER THINGS

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Bounties

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These bounties, if you ask me, ought to have a drastically altered structure. Right now they’re chopped up into stages based off of regular mission concepts, but there’s no difference from one to the other save the final stage. Let’s make each bounty be a unique mission, like a Destiny 2 Public Event, and we’ll play them over and over again, but the missions will still be fun as the inherent nature of the Pits will create randomness, since the path out will be random but the threats which the path could wind through won’t - you’ll just be going a different way.

Steal Water: Raid Pandelirium, breach the lowest level of their storage Section, siphon off a chunk of ice (which has to be pre-frozen, since the Corpus find it cheaper - less space-intensive - to just store liquid water), then Hijack that to ride the iceball all the way back to the big lava flow where Orokin robots can pick it up for the Kaltras.

Repel Corpus Incursion: Blow up Corpus incursion vehicles, wipe out local camps, do random S#&$, and then finally kill a couple hundred Corpus until you make sand bounce.

Defoliate Germinating Infested: Track down several Infested growths and their source, building up a metallic Botuloid toxin in choice volcanic vents by killing Infested there, then running a distiller, then injecting it into an Infestation site, then killing choice Antigens - mostly reskinned and scaled up heavy Infested with ridiculous amounts of armor and twenty levels above the expected level - to kill any new growth for good.

Investigate Abandoned Site:

Restock Automatic Defenses: 

Defend Katurga Settlements

Redirect Boeni Invasion: You need to provide a decoy for the Boeni’s Warden transports - Orokin levitators cut into and turned into gunship-pillars, basically - by getting an entire small settlement somewhere in the middle of the map up and running. You restock the reactor with power cells, you re-establish life support by venting toxic gas buildup out from certain rooms (like Survival), you drive the Infested out from some rooms (like the capture-and-hold Stages). Then, the Boeni will come, and you must use the settlements limited defenses to prevent their Wardens from reaching a point where they can attack a Kaltras or Katurga outpost which is actually active. This involves using turrets to down Wardens, then killing their troops on foot.

Infested Harvesting

THE ENDGAME: THE FOREST OF CORPSES, AND THE DESCENT INTO THE PIT

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Coming Soon

OKAY BUT WHAT'S THE LOOT LIKE

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New Amp Bits:

Tantra Prism: Fires a shotgun array of six pellets which start out in a broad spread and home into a single point, then weave back out, in and out and in.

Senjou Prism: Fires machine-gun spray of projectiles which twitch forward in short bursts but deal good damage - essentially creating a minefield of moving bullets.

Pistyx Prism: Fires rounds which deal arcing damage as they travel before exploding on some poor sap.

Vulpe Scaffold: Emits broad, short-ranged “flamethrower”of Void Energy.

Yalcol Scaffold: Fires small, mouse-guided ‘rockets’.

Xaquat Scaffold: Discharges laser spray similar to the Phage.

New Weapons:

Ubitzi: A Tenno Mac-10 or Uzi, a fast-firing, S#&$ty-range submachine gun.

Sunu: Kaltras Staff with impact and blast damage, effectively a way of placing explosive charges on rocks one doesn’t want to get close to weaponized.

Gilial: Infested machine gun, a BP dropped from Elite Ancient Chargers which is basically their spine and mouth twisted into a large, bulky gun. It fires fast Viral flechettes, and furthermore becomes more accurate over time instead of less accurate, penalizing burstfire and demanding sustained support.

 

Obviously I'm gonna add some more stuff later - consider this a work in progress along the lines of Unus's landscape concept, Rising Tides I think it's called? Let me know what you think - feedback boosts my flimsy ego and keeps me wasting my time on this.

Edited May 5, 2018 by S.T.M.P.D
Added Enemies, some Bounties, a bit of Loot.

[o.0-]

Wanted to add an idea here as to what could have made it a target in the past, with Warframe's existing lore.

Maybe when the plant growth on Earth got out of hand, people turned to Io, to farm the sulfur for fertilizer (like sulfuric acid, and other applications), so that people would still be able to eat, as it suddenly became one of the few places where it can easily be found for industrial scale farming needs.

And it be came a place were forced labor was used to collect the sulfur from such a landscape.

So yeah, think this can be a pretty cool planetary body to explore, once the devs get the time necessary to bring something like this to life.

[S.T.M.P.D]

Update! I've added some cool enemy types and a handful of Bounties, which are less like strung-together regular missions and more like Public Events in Destiny, with specific goals that makes each mission type genuinely unique.

[IgnisFaatus]

Damn I have to say this would be a awesome addition to the game, loads of interesting stuff I particularly like the new enemy ideas and more dakka.

 

Edited May 11, 2018 by IgnisFaatus

[(XBOX)T1me1sN0w]

Hot dang this is pretty good! I think this should definitely be put into the game!