The Chaos Emeralds and The Phantom Ruby
Sonic Forces seems to put quite a bit of emphasis on the Phantom Ruby- but where are the other mystical rocks we have come to know and love?
We never see them in the original game, and we don’t get a super boss fight. Despite this approach seeming formulaic and dramatic, boss fights in super form being so predictable that they have been expected, it is undeniable that the super form and the chaos emeralds are iconic and present in most mainline games.
They will be present in this mainline game as well now, along with the Master Emerald.
Location of the Master Emerald:
The Master Emerald is currently located in a secured room on the main Resistance base in order to keep it safe. No resistance members are aware of its current location other than Knuckles, Tails, and Rouge. (Because you can never keep a secret from Rouge.)
Location of the Chaos Emeralds (Not all of the Emeralds are set yet, but will likely be found in stages. This will be updated later.):
Yellow: Tails’ temporary workshop
It is mentioned that the Phantom Ruby is supposedly invented by Eggman in the Forces continuity, and when overlooking Infinite in his labs he boasts about his invention while also holding Phantom Ruby prototypes. This brings the question- how exactly did Eggman create such a powerful, reality altering crystal? I will aim to answer this.
In this new continuity, the Phantom Ruby is a heavily modified faux Chaos Emerald that retains some of the properties that the Emerald used to create it has. Similar to the faux Chaos Emerald in SA2 that Tails made, they initially were only able to be used once and with great difficulty to produce a small instance of Chaos Control. The Ruby Prototypes slowly grew into a project of their own outside of the concept of creating a fully functioning Chaos Emerald as Eggman continued his experimentation and found a way to cause the illusory effects seen throughout the game, honing in on that new aspect and seeing the potential it can have. The prototype that caused these illusions became the new model for continued experimentation and modification, multiple copies produced with minor changes until he had created the end result- a fully functional crystal capable of draining, storing, or creating energy and crafting lasting, potent reality-altering illusions as well as an unlimited power source.
The Phantom Ruby’s red color is evident due to the Chaos Emerald it was based off of being the red colored one within Eggman’s possession, which continued to be prevalent in all of the prototypes. This also ties it to the element that the red Chaos Emerald supposedly represents- power.
He was not initially going to place a functional Phantom Ruby within Infinite as a host, but found that similarly to Chaos Emeralds the Ruby was actually more powerful when utilized by a mobian lifeform. Infinite was simply a convenient test subject to see the effects the Phantom Ruby produced in relation to mobian anatomy, that later became an even more convenient puppet to control the world with and perpetuate fear with minimal effort.
Infinite was not always Infinite, and was only known as such when the Phantom Ruby became part of him. His project name is Project Infinite in Eggman’s labs. The Phantom Ruby effects the body it is implanted in in many negative ways despite the sheer amount of harnessed power, as mentioned in the previous post on the corrupting influence of the Ruby.
More information on the Phantom Ruby will be revealed later on as the script progresses.
