Ra Ciela and its Sun, Bezel, during its final days.
Ra Ciela (ラシエーラ, rashieera?) is the name of the planet that serves as the setting for Ciel nosurge: Ushinawareta Hoshi e Sasagu Uta, and it also has a great importance on the events that unfold throughout the Surge Concerto series.
It used to be a green and lush planet many years ago, but during the age in which Ciel nosurge takes place, Ra Ciela is coming to its end: its sun, Bezel has turned into a red giant which will end up swallowing it if nothing is done. This is why the factions Tenmon and Chimon have devised their own plans to save either the people or the entire planet; and why they are betting so much on the current Imperial Succession Ceremony and on their respective Empress candidates: Ionasal.kkll.Preciel and Kanoyeel.kkll.Preciel.
However, in the end this was all for naught, as while the plan chosen at the end was Tenmon's plan of migrating to another planet, after the ceremony in which the new Empress would sing the song for converting Ra Ciela into energy and use it to teleport herself and all of humanity to another planet, the song and the Micro Quasar were sabotaged by an interloper from another world, the very same that originally brought humans to Ra Ciela in the first place: Nero. Nero's sabotage nullified the initially successful teleporation and transported her and Ion 5000 years in the future, and thus the people were forced to try and find their destination planet again while traveling through space on the Colony Ship Soreil during that time.
By the time the events of Ar nosurge: Ode to an Unborn Star take place, nothing remains of Ra Ciela, except for a large expanse of energy where the core of the planet used to be long ago. The Spherial Rings and the Singing Hill space station that were constructed around it for the migration project still continue orbiting around the former core even now. However, during the game's events, a song was developed to recreate a new world from its remains, Ra Ciel Reincarnation. Ion and the survivors of the Soreil sang it to revive Ra Ciela.
History[]
Antiquity[]
Long before the humans came to this planet, it used to be known by the name Sharanohiar (シャラノイア, sharanoia?, lit. "Sharlanoia") and it was inhabited mostly by the Genoms. While the planet was in crisis five times, the Genoms connected their feelings with those of the Wills that created their planet and managed to save it, which also brought growth to their souls and made them closer to the Wills.
However, all this changed when the humans suddenly appeared on Sharanohiar 5000 years priors to the events of Ciel nosurge, running away from their previous dying planet, Ciela. Afterwards, they initiated an extermination campaign in which the Sharls, the original form of the Genoms and the native inhabitants of the planet, were annihilated. However, the humans started succumbing to the dangers inherents to the new planet, which they were unable to prepare for, and thus their numbers greatly dwindled, which also brought a large loss of technological and scientific prowess to them. It was after they had fallen quite a long way from the technological level they had when they first arrived at the planet, that the Sharls, now under the shape of the Genoms, started approaching them and they established a symbiotic relationship, all following the plans one of the former Sharl sages, Cosal, who now was the King of the Genoms, had devised.
The humans at some point then renamed the planet as Ra Ciela, meaning "New Ciela", and established the Empress lineage that continued for as long as the planet continued existing.
However, the method they used to arrive to this planet, which consisted of forcefully bringing the soul of a girl from another dimension to this world and then using her powers to send them to Ra Ciela destroyed the balance of the universe, and since the sun of this planet, Bezel was the closest object to that foreign soul, it was the recipient of the distorted waves this caused, turning Bezel into a red giant and starting the recurrent problem of the Wave Bursts. This gradually destroyed Ra Ciela's capabilities to harbor life, so after some time, all the nations that were in it disappeared, the only one remaining being the Empire ruled by the Empress.
Two Factions with Dark Secrets[]
The few inhabitable areas remaining in Ra Ciela during its final years, covered by the Anti-Wave Shell.
Around ten years prior to the events of Ciel nosurge, the two factions that fought over the hegemony of Ra Ciela noticed the problem of the sun enlarging couldn't be left unchecked anymore due to the frequency and intensity of the Wave Bursts increasing with every passing day, so they both designed two plans to solve the situation: Chimon developed the Save Bezel Project, which consisted of uniting the feelings of all humans and Genoms in Ra Ciela in order to craft Song Magic that would stabilize Bezel; while Tenmon developed the Grand Phoenix Project, which consisted of transforming Ra Ciela into energy and use it to teleport to another inhabitable planet, much like their ancestors did to arrive to Ra Ciela. Very much like both factions, the population of Ra Ciela was split in two sides, as Save Bezel seemed to be impossible to pull off, while Grand Phoenix would require to sacrifice Ra Ciela and all life on it, as the only creatures that were supposed to be saved through it were the humans themselves.
It was under these tense circumstances that both factions began carrying out tremendously questionable actions: Chimon grabbed 229 orphaned girls, shipped them to the Genomirai Research Institute and turned them into test subjects that were injected with the gRNA Virus α in order to create a being that would be able to Synchronize with any Genom regardless of their power. Of them, only one girl, Dudu Noechium (229) survived, while the others all died due to their organisms being unable to adapt to the virus.
This sole survivor was later on renamed as Kanoyeel.Cielsh.o.Domneq.Genometrica and given the highest political position within the faction: the Chimon Archbishop, which also made her eligible to be the Princess for Chimon, robbing Zillillium Rimonite from both seats. However, one of the experiments with Kanoyeel ended in disaster: when she was made to attempt synchronizing with the Cielnotron Server through a Ciel nosurge Tube, the REON-OS used the chance to spread a virus that caused over 60% of the laboratory staff to fall into a coma. This incident was dubbed the Genomirai Pandemic, and it was what caused the Genomirai Research Institute to close up and the survivors of its research team to disband, with most of the victims being burned to death and all the doorways in the Institute being welded shut to stop the virus from disseminating.
As for Tenmon, its leader Revelt Flandresca followed another plan. He took his first daughter, Ionasal, who also was the current Princess of Tenmon due to being the second child of the current Empress, and forced her to undergo a Territory Exchange treatment with the soul of a girl called Nei Yuuki that was brought from another dimension. Therefore, Nei's soul was forced into Ionasal's body and kept locked up into a cell for a year in fear that she could trigger a disaster similar to the Genomirai Pandemic, while Ionasal's original soul was thrown away as unwanted trash. Ionasal's soul would've faded away if she was kept like that, but fortunately for her, a researcher friend of her called Fractel felt terribly about this and managed to put her soul into the body of a prototype Sharl, though this ended costing Fractel her life when she was caught by PLASMA soldiers and got shot to death.
(more to come later...)
Locations[]
The only remaining inhabitable zone in Ra Ciela during the time Ciel nosurge takes place in is the north magnetic pole due to being protected by the Anti-Wave Shell and being the coldest area in the planet, as the rest of the surface has been burned and turned into an arid wasteland as a consequence of its sun reaching its red giant phase far earlier than it was supposed to. It is within this protective dome that the Empire has its domains.
Of the locations in the area protected by the Shell, the most famous one used to be the city of Manjusara, which is also the only remaining city on the planet's surface. However, the surface is the place where the poor live, while the more wealthy people live instead in floating cities in the skies called Colonies. Normally, the people from the surface suffer from the damage and deaths caused by the Wave Bursts or from the Collapses resulting from the Shell that protects the city from the Bursts breaking down from all the time it has been working, which causes large pieces of debris to fall and crush entire areas of the settlement.
On the other hand, the inhabitants of the Colons don't have these worries because these floating cities have their own electromagnetic field generators to repel the Bursts.
The areas of Ra Ciela revisited in Ciel nosurge are as follows:
- Manjusara
- Dream Sphere Colony
- Planetary Maison Colony
- Tz-Tube Company HQ
- Information Collection City Almetica
- Colony Four Seasons
- Former Genomirai Research Institute
- Chimon Grand Cathedral
- Palace Nyurokiel
- Colony Ship Soreil
- Imperial Palace