Original Continuity ask Meme: Backdrop. What's your favourite location, or setting you designed for this Au? Just a curious Anon who loves your art designs.
Backdrop: what’s your favorite place or setting in this AU?
I’ve actually answered this once before! I haven’t managed to draw any more of Simfur, whoops. Settings and backgrounds are not my strong suit 😬
But I can tell you about a different ancient city that rose after the sundering of Simfur. While the story of SNAP never actually visits this place, I think it’s important enough to at least mention. Tyrestis, later translated as Doradus, was the second greatest city of ancient Cybertron. It rose after the God War ended, trying to recreate the grandeur of Simfur and, uh, not quite succeeding.
In fact, that’s where the first version of functionism began. It’s actually better described as ratioism, but function by frametype, classification by size, and the concept of worthlessness outside of work began in Tyrestis society. It was an incredibly wealthy city, and very prosperous... for those who were rich. The servant, laborer, and slave castes were not so fortunate.
It didn’t have a particularly large territory, but the size of the city itself was enough to contain several million citizens. Very few Knights of Cybertron passed through Tyrestis despite its extensive temple network and heavily religious society. None of those ancient heroes seemed to trust it very much, especially as the original thirteen Primes began to disappear. This did not stop the religious culture at all, especially in later years when fanaticism took over. Cybertronian sacrifice became a common practice, with insurgents and blasphemers usually thrown to alloygators to be consumed. Alloygators are still linked to sacrifice in modern superstitions and are thought to drag their victims to the Well of Sparks, where they placidly swim with the dead.
It fell, eventually, partly because of its own bloated corruption, partly because people became dissatisfied and left for a less oppressive home, and partly from skirmishers and raids from nearby cultures chasing Tyrestis’ fabled wealth. The Maximal Empire rose soon after the twilight of the city, absorbing its territory into its borders, and the area is no more than ruins now. As Cybertronix evolved over the megavorns, it became better known as Doradus. Most people only know of it in the history books, its plundered remains somewhere in the crust of Cybertron near Vos.
Perhaps the most commonly known tidbit is the fact that the name Tyrest came from the city’s founder and greatest regent. It’s still used as a more traditional, historic name today, similar to Optimus, Magnum, Terminus, and other names of the Knights of Cybertron. Many people know the fable of how the city’s founder came from nowhere, with nothing, not even his name, and after amassing a following and guiding them to building this great civilization with naught but the labor of their hands, he took the city’s name as his own: Liege Tyrest.
