Standing Out From the Crowd

As I found out a while ago, Today actually marks the day the first Sonic game came out. So think of this as somewhat of a celebration of it.

Not long after the Spanish arrived on mainland North America in early 1519, they were exploring the jungles of the region and came across a village. What was strange about the village was that it wasn't populated by the Native Americans they seen previous. They weren't even populated by humans at all. Instead, they were populated by a group of people which are made up of various species of animals (foxes, squirrels, birds, and many others) but walked and talked just like humans. With the help of interrupters, the Spanish learned that these people were called Mobians, and that they lived in a feudal-like society in a country known as Mobius. Both the Spanish and the Mobians were surprised to see one another. The Spanish, because they had never seen anyone like the Mobians, and the Mobians, because they had never seen white-skinned humans before, nor seen them so civilized. Interactions between the two groups were good at first. Both groups traded items, learned about each others cultures, and the Mobians even invited them to their capital city. Soon, however, the Spaniards lust for gold (which they found that the Mobians had plenty of) and conquest got the better of them and began to wage war against Mobius.

Despite having superior weaponry and having the Native Americans on their side, the Mobians managed to repel the Spanish off the continent after a year and a half of fighting and fleeing to Cuba, but at a high cost. The Mobians lost nearly 20,000 people from the war against the Spanish and Native American populations, and would loss even more from the subsequent diseases from the old world that some soldiers had caught from the Spanish. This loss, however, didn't seem to stop them from recovering from these events and expand and grow itself as a nation free from European colonization. In the centuries that followed, Mobius would adapt various ways of European life such as technology, architecture, agriculture, and even clothing. They moved away from a feudal-society in the 17th century and reformed the nation as the Kingdom of Mobius.  Meanwhile, the Spanish Empire - which was by that point was now called the Iberian Union - didn't make anymore attempts at conquering Mobius. Though, they put more investments in their other new world colonies and established others in hopes to impede Mobian expansion, with limited success.

Ever since European influence waned in the America's following the various revolutions in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Mobius built itself as a great power of the region. The industrial revolution came the country in the 1820's, modernizing it further and becoming a greater producer of goods. They made good use of railways, hauling passengers and freight and creating a great rail-networking spanning most of the country, even completing a transcontinental railroad in 1858. A canal was built in the 1880's to down on shipping time and European powers use it as another route to the pacific. Despite their great success in these areas, Mobius has always had troubling relations with the Native American's. The reasons for it being that, [1] They helped the Spanish against them, and [2] Their view of the Natives as being uncivilized was only recently being changed. Heck, the only reason they made the Native Humans zones was so that the discontent in the most populated Native regions wouldn't start rebelling against them. This is one of several things that their biggest rival just loves to mention to them.

The United States of Columbia - the aforementioned rival - came into existence after rebelling against the British over the massive taxation without representation the British Crown placed on them after they lost in the Hudson's Bay War against France. Following its independence, it began expanding westward. It purchased much of the sparsely populated northern region of New Málaga from Iberia in 1801, to support its war in Europe. Then they made a treaty with France in 1820 and with Mobius in 1840, which defined the border between the countries. Columbia also purchased parts of Russian America from the Russians, so that they would have access to the Pacific. Despite their success, they've always felt second best when compared to Mobius. Essentially, they wanted to be the big power. Not long after Mobius, they began industrialization, but once they started challenging the Mobians, it was token to the next level. Practically every major city in the country is dirty, polluted, and give off the gray, depression feeling no matter how you look at it.

Relations between the two nations were never great since Columbia began challenging Mobius for dominance in North America, but they were going to get a lot worse. On July 1st, 1902, while attending the World's Fair in Québec, New France, Columbian president Wilbert McClellan, was shot at by a Hedgehog anarchist. He would died five days later. After his death, his vice president, a scientist and machinist Dr. Ivo "Eggman" Robotnik, assumed office. Soon after, he accused the Mobian government of the assassination. Mobius denied these claims and said that they had nothing to do with it.

An opportunist would say that a peaceful solution will be found. A realist would say otherwise.