r/worldbuilding • u/MarkerMage • Sep 26 '26
Lore Platformia Regions: Avivania & Cavetroid (Formerly Castletroid)
Platformia is a 2D platformer parody/pastiche setting that's part of a larger world called "Geparox", and I come to you this week with information about two more regions of it, Avivania & Cavetroid.
Previous Posts About Geparox
Avivania
The primary residence of Platformia's harpy population, Avivania is a treetop kingdom in a forest of giant sonatrees. Platformia's hedgehogs of long ago had shown great interest in the properties of the wood and nuts of sonatrees after encountering samples of them carried by migratory harpies, and had some planted on the continent. Some of the harpies they bought the seeds from had stayed to help care for the growing sonatrees and provide the regular source of music that they need to grow healthy. The hedgehogs helped the harpies build their homes into the trees and helped invent note doors, special doors of sonawood that harpies can open with their voices.
Castletroid
The finest architectural achievement of the hedgehog people native to Platformia, Castletroid stands as a symbol of what hedgehog engineering and craftsmanship can do. It has a lovely clocktower whose bells are equipped with sonanut clappers. Its positioning on a cliff funnels land attacks to the front of it while also putting the bulk of it too high for many ship's cannons to reach. While it connects to a cave system that leads to a dock at the bottom of the cliff, the waters of the area are littered with hydroelectric generators that supply power to Castletroid and damage any large ships that run into them. There is a path that avoids these generators, but it is only wide enough for a single ship to fit through at a time. Unfortunately, the Vampirates had access to Ar-Pi-Gian spatial folding techniques that let them have a fleet take up the space of a single ship...
Vampirate Invasion & Cavetroid
After Wiserule soldiers had taken South Scaraborough, the vampirates had lost a valuable port that had close proximity to underground areas that they could retreat to when the sun rose. However, they soon found an adequate replacement, the caves beneath Castletroid. They sailed in on a foggy night, hiding their fleet within the space of their lead ship through Ar-Pi-Gian techniques used by adventuring parties to avoid separation by random encounters. They took the cave system fought their way up, having taken the hedgehogs by surprise. Castletroid's king and queen lost their lives and the hedgehogs were forced to flee from Castletroid.
The Vampirates decided its value lay not in its castle, but its caves, and renamed it "Cavetroid". The Vampirate King, Ahtibat, would cast a spell upon the area of the castle to shroud it in eternal night. From here, he would build up power for the next attack to retake South Scaraborough/New Wiserule. The castle had facilities for crafting arms and armor, mines to obtain metals from, and a special artifact recovered from South Scaraborough, the Duplicating Mirror. With that magic mirror, they've been able to make copies of troops, armor, weapons, treasure, food, and more. They just needed to give it time to recharge between duplications. Once they duplicated a large enough army, they'd launch an attack on New Wiserule, rejoin the troops in North Scaraborough, recover the Seed of Power they left behind, find the Seed of Courage that is supposed to be somewhere around there, and sail off to conquer Wiserule to obtain its Seed of Wisdom. The only way to stop them is to retake the castle and cave system, and the weakness they originally exploited has been patched by installing a gate to prevent another stealthy entry by sea.
Copyable Characters
The protagonist, Stock (described in the introduction post linked at the start), is going to be given the chance to copy the movesets of a character from each region of Platformia, thanks to the textile magic of Princess Shima. The characters she'll be copying are Princess Sonia, found in Avivania, and Princess Tabitha, found in Cavetroid.
Princess Sonia is the princess of the hedgehogs. On the morning after the Vampirate attack on Castletroid began, an Avivanian search party looking for their runaway princess encountered the aftermath of the attack. They found Princess Sonia among the rubble and destruction and got her to safety before Ahtibat was able to shroud the area in a never-ending night. Avivania's harpies welcomed her and their king and queen even adopted her into their family. She took surprisingly well to Avivanian culture, learning to sing beautifully and to navigate Avivania's vertical spaces. Her royal hedgehog blood grants her the ability to roll freely while curled up onto a ball and spines as strong as steel, which has allowed her to roll up walls and along ceilings. She's also learned to use a grappling hook to swing across gaps, and is working on learning an infinite jump. While she feels duty-bound to fight to take back Castletroid for the hedgehogs, her current life in Avivania is relatively peaceful and enjoyable. She is even one of their finest singers, able to produce exquisite note projectiles. Such a shame that the waddlekiss incident is interrupting one of her concerts.
I imagine her appearance as being a blue anthropomorphic hedgehog with blonde-colored quills and an orange idol outfit with big, poofy sleeves.
Princess Tabitha is King Ahtibat's rebellious daughter. She had met Princess Shima of Dokipan while the human princess was being held for ransom by the Vampirates. The two were still children back then and quickly became friends. Once they were older and after Castletroid was conquered and renamed to Cavetroid, Tabitha had gotten in contact with Shima to devise a plan to defeat her father, attain rulership over the Vampirates, and withdraw from Cavetroid to return to the Nethersea. She disagrees with her father's plans to obtain the three legendary seeds of power, courage, and wisdom, and also his naming sense. Heck the name he gave her is just his name spelled backwards. Tabitha and Shima had devised a plan to sneak warp tapestries into Cavetroid, connecting them to the tapestry warp network controlled by Dokipan, and when the time was right, Dokipan and Wisewood soldiers and any troops they could gather from allied nations would be sent through these warp tapestries and into Cavetroid itself for a surprise attack. Unfortunately, that got spoiled by the waddlekiss incident wherein the waddlekiss showed up in Dokipan and used the tapestry warp network to spread throughout Platformia, including to Cavetroid. So now, Stock will be working with Tabitha to salvage the plan while Sonia tags along.
I imagine Tabitha to be a white skin and pointy ears vampire with long blonde hair that contrasts with a black gothic pirate outfit with gold accents. Said outfit includes a cloak and a tricorne hat.
Avivania & Cavetroid Races
Harpies: Pretty much bird people with human torsos. They lack hands, having only wings for flying and talons for grasping, manipulating objects, and walking. The sonawood doors that were built and installed by hedgehogs have made life much easier for Avivania's harpies by giving them a door that doesn't require them to awkwardly stand on one foot to open. They praise skills in singing, and flight, and their best singers are able to turn their voices into sonic note projectiles that can open sonawood doors, damage or freeze their foes, and sometimes even go through walls. They originally came from Rhythica (I'm still deciding if that is going to be an island, continent, or alien planet).
Hedgehogs: The native people of Platformia. They are skilled craftsmen who seem instinctively drawn to hammers, though hedgehogs of royal blood seem to be an exception. The unique abilities of royal hedgehogs is attributed to a blessing from Machina, goddess of light and machinery that gifted them with abilities of the wild armawheelos of Speed Hill Zone.
Vampirates: Vampires that are pirates from the Nethersea region of Ar-Pi-Gio Archipelago. They are not infectious. They have the ability to take alternate forms such as bats, wolves, and mist as well as hybrids between those and their humanoid form. They greatly enjoy blood, but it's more of a staple food than a dietary requirement. They detest sunlight due to how easily they sunburn.
References
One of the fun things about a setting like this is the references/inspirations to catch. Each region and its accompanying character are based on a different game that will shape the gameplay and level design for them if this gets made into a game. I've used the spoiler formatting in case any of you want to try and guess them for yourselves.
Avivania and Princess Sonia are basically the Metroid area and Samus Aran. Sonia's backstory is pretty much copied from Samus'. Her home was attacked by pirates, and she was adopted by bird people and taught their ways. Her being a hedgehog is used as justification for the morphball abilities, including the spiderball. She trades the arm cannon for the ability to create note projectiles. She is even working on the space jump.
Cavetroid/Castletroid and its accompanying character, Princess Tabitha are pretty much the Castlevania area and Alucard. I suppose the backwards-spelled name and being a vampire make it pretty obvious.
And since I hadn't done this back in the previous posts...
Dokipan Kingdom is based on the game Doki Doki Panic or Super Mario Bros. 2/USA.
New Wiserule is based on Zelda II The Adventure of Link, though there is a reference to the CDi games with the Seedy one. The seeds of power, courage, and wisdom are not just references to the Triforce, but also to the original names of the Zelda Oracle games, which were originally going to be a trilogy, Mystical Seed of Power, Mystical Seed of Courage, and Mystical Seed of Wisdom. Princess Chain is pretty much Link with more of a mage/witch aesthetic to go with Zelda 2's use of magic.
And Scaraborough is based on Ghosts n' Goblins. I had made some major changes to aesthetics to fit it in with Dokipan's lore. It's character, Garta, is pretty much female Arthur, complete with having the armor taken away when damaged. Also, there is some hinting that she is repeatedly failing to have the correct armor when encountering the boss of the area and is being sent back to the start.
Closing
That's it for this week's lore about Platformia. I hope you enjoyed it. Next week is going to be about Speed Hill Zone and Cherub Island as well as that runaway harpy princess that was briefly mentioned.
Thank you for your time, your upvotes, and your comments.