OC Guide

This is an OOC page that talks about the metatextual elements of Oneirosea.

Oneirosea is meant to be an open-ended setting to make OCs in. Make them and show me, I love seeing them!!

This guide is designed as supplementary material to the wiki. I want to replicate the feeling of trawling a fan wiki for fun details about your favourite anime so you can make a fan character, so there are lots of juicy tidbits scattered in the wiki proper that aren't covered in this guide. Please read the wiki if you can!

General

Oneirosea is based on cheesy stupid shonen anime, like Bleach, Black Clover, and so forth. The ideal tone should be over-the-top and cool, but also very genuine and willing to engage with serious topics when necessary. You know, the kind of show where the bombastic magic fights are also metaphors for ideological clashes between the characters.

Humans

Most characters in osea will be humans. They're like humans in real life, for the most part, with similar backstories and life problems. There are some small differences due to osea taking place in an alternate near future (real red meats are rarer / more expensive, most people get drone deliveries instead of going to stores, microtransactions are even more inescapable, etc), but the broad strokes are unchanged.

Design

People have many more options for body modification since this setting is a cyberpunk hellfuture. Therefore you can get away with a lot of anime bullshit in their designs.

Biomods can give you any color of hair or eyes. Small attachments like patches of fur, pointed ears, horns, etc. are all possible. You can't make drastic changes to your bone structure, though, and your attachments can't be motile. You can only wiggle your cat ears if you could already wiggle your ears pre-surgery.

Cybernetic enhancements are also possible. However, I'd like to emphasize that most cybernetics in this setting are disability aids, and written as such. They are not perfect or "better" replacements, and are often challenging to use in different ways than organic body parts. The fact that they are often designed to make abled people more comfortable, rather than to fit disabled people's needs, is also a common source of problems. Someone who chopped bits of their body off to get cybernetics would be regarded as a maniac or at least an extremely dedicated bodymodder in-universe.

If you're not interested in anything permanent, there are lots of options for hologram accessories out there. Fake wings, 3D digital pets that hang out on your shoulders, etc., anything as long as you're wearing a small bit of tech that can project it. Holograms are translucent and glowy enough that you can tell they're not real, though; the effect is especially unconvincing under harsh sunlight.

Occupation

Most important characters in osea work for Alcyon Corporation. (I call it Alcorp for short. I haven't decided if people do this in-universe.) Alcorp is one of those huge cyberpunk megacorporations with their fingers in a lot of different pies, but the thing they're most famous for lately is their research into oneirosea. Basically, they present themselves as protectors of humanity, who research demons and slay / exorcise them to keep everyone else safe. More detail on their structure and divisions in the linked page; tl;dr offense guys are demon slayers and defense guys are exorcists, and other divisions are less important.

Working with demon stuff is widely known to be dangerous. There are injuries every day and hearing about a coworker death isn't uncommon. But Alcorp pays really well and has good benefits, plus you might get shuffled into one of the non-combat positions anyway. So lots of people roll the dice.

Labyrinth is another company in a similar business. They've got a rivalry with Alcorp going on.

Abilities

Humans can get mares, which are completely unique abilities based on their dreams. Symbolically, they usually have something to do with their dreams in the aspiration sense, too - e.g. a flashy and attention-drawing power for someone who fears being alone and wants people to acknowledge them. They come in a number of different types, but these are loose guidelines, so feel free to make up whatever.

They can spontaneously manifest if someone has recurring nightmares; mares manifested this way are powerful but also come with drawbacks, often severe enough that they're seen as unique chronic illnesses. Alcorp has also created a way to manifest them artificially in compatible people (~10% of the population) and do this often to create workers who can effectively fight demons, so most people with mares are Alcorp employees.

Once they have a mare, they can also do other stuff, which is covered in more detail on the powers page.

Diels

You can also make a diel. Diels are demons who have made a deal with Alcorp, and work for them in exchange for an android body so they can exist in reality.

All diels work for Alcorp (see the humans > occupation section). They're not allowed to quit; they lose the rights to their bodies if they do. They're generally treated pretty poorly, being paid a pittance for 12-hour (or longer) shifts, and their bodies can be deactivated (causing their death) whenever the command division feels like it. But technically they're less expensive because they don't need to eat or sleep, and most demons don't really understand what fair working conditions are anyway, so Alcorp gets away with it.

Design

By default, diel bodies look like humans, just with a bar code visible somewhere on their faces for identification purposes. They're custom-built, so demons can decide what they want to look like if they're interested. Each body comes with a few "slots" that they can temporarily show parts of their demon form through (e.g. horns or wings). This lets them access their demon powers, but they can't use it for long periods of time in the real world.

Alcorp also provides mod catalogues, so diels can buy weirder looking features for... way too much money. Some diels get features to resemble their demon forms for comfort purposes, some get the useful ones like zoom-capable eyes, while others are just really into the modifications and treat it like dressup. Their heads, faces, and torsos need to be regulation human shape, because otherwise the body doesn't work. They should also remain human-shaped and not have like, a whole extra body's worth of stuff stuck to them. But other than that they can basically go crazy. Tails, retractable claws, storage compartments in their arms, whatever.

They can also request more stripped-down bodies, with visible doll joints or missing panelling or things like that. This is a bit cheaper than the standard model, so diels who want to spend a lot of money on other things might go for this option.

You might also find it fun to design their original demon forms. Demons generally have an aquatic animal theme to them, but as long as they have the required eyes, you can do whatever. Weaker demons tend to be "conceptually indistinct", and don't look like anything in particular. Stronger demons can resemble specific things, but it's rarely 1:1, and there are usually other concepts shuffled and mixed in.

Personality & Backstory

Demons spontaneously come into existence in oneirosea. They're "born" knowing some random things from the collective human unconscious, and can learn more by absorbing the environment around them or eating other demons. This knowledge tends to be really random and inconsistent - like, they could have comprehensive knowledge of traffic laws in California but not know what a car is. They can also "know" things that are untrue. Demons that are recruited as diels know how to speak at least one human language decently well, and have some knowledge of what normal behavior for humans is like, but there are often holes in both. As a result, they tend to act in noticeably nonhuman ways, having wrongly ordered priorities, no self-preservation, or other weird traits.

Since there's such a huge variation in what demons can be like, most of them don't really make friends with each other and live solitary lives. Some even actively hunt each other, to satisfy some instinct, or for sport, or something else. However, there are some groups of demons that band together for safety or a common goal, and they can even be family-like on rare occasions.

Many demons are unsatisfied with life in oneirosea, since it is a constantly shifting dream world where they have a hard time holding onto their own identities. Some possess humans to take their bodies. Diels are demons who decided that robot bodies were good enough for them; this could be because they empathize with humans and don't want to hurt them, but it could also be because they think robots are cool, or whatever other reason.

Diels bodies were first invented 18 years ago, so that's the longest period of time your diel could have worked for Alcorp. Their history as a demon before that point can be much longer, though.

Abilities

Demons can manifest unique powers known as wakes. These are similar to human mares (see humans > abilities), but the symbolism usually has to do with their personal identity rather than their aspirations. As such, they're a bit more malleable than mares and it's a bit more likely for them to change over time. Again, more abilities are covered on the powers page.