StarDriverConversion

For the purposes of Radiant Heart:

Character options: Star Drivers! These make up most of the canon cast: individuals with a Cybody emblem and the ability to channel that Cybody's power.

• Star Drivers' henshin is referred to as "apprivoising" - it's triggered by declaring "Apprivoiser!" to activate the link with their Cybody.
• Each Star Driver has a "first phase" ability gained after they apprivoise with their Cybody for the first time. First phase powers run the gamut from enhanced natural abilities (beauty, business acumen, the ability to easily befriend people) to supernatural ones (barrier bubbles, healing, body swapping, Giant Destructive Pillar of Light). Enhanced natural abilities work out of henshin, but supernatural abilities require transformation to use.
• Cybodies have wills and personalities of their own. They're able to appear in a miniature form, about the size of a floating cat, and communicate with and advise their Star Driver. They also possess memories of their history, and can share these with their Driver to a limited extent.
• Some Star Drivers possess "star swords," energy blades named after gemstones (but French) such as Star Swords Émeraude and Saphir.
• Star Drivers can activate a super-mode form in which they manifest magical phantom power armor in the form of their Cybody. This form drains a lot of the Driver's energy, so it is reserved for emergency situations.
• Full sized giant robot Cybodies are not accessible, barring special staff approval for specific climactic plot purposes. Base henshin and power armor forms only.
• For OBVIOUS REASONS we are not keeping the series' canon use of "libido" as a term for magical energy. It is instead referred to as "drive" when a specific term is needed.
• Most of the Cybodies seen in canon are warrior-type Cybodies with offense-oriented abilities. The exceptions are Samekh and the four Maiden Cybodies.
• The Star Drivers of the four Maiden Cybodies - Wawna, Nunna, Memna, and Hethna - have the ability to invoke a pseudo Zero Time barrier. While not the same as true Zero Time, the barrier shifts the space around them into a pocket dimension of sorts only accessible by magical people, allowing magical combat to take place without causing massive property damage or putting non-magical bystanders in danger.
• During the series the Maiden Cybodies were almost completely passive, focused on containing Samekh and the other Cybodies. That's no longer the case, and their Star Drivers can transform and fight just like other Star Drivers, though their powers tend to have more emphasis on defense, healing, and purification as compared to the warrior-type Cybodies.

Non-Star Driver members of Glittering Crux also exist. Many of these are in the Science Guild brigade, involved in researching the capabilities of the Cybodies and inventing technology to interface with them, restore them, and improve their capabilities.

Aside from the Star Drivers, emblem families, and members of Glittering Crux, there are also a few alien observers who call themselves the Entropeople. Sarina Endo, club president of Midnight Flight and one of the Entropeople, explains that they have no power to influence the Cybodies or oppose the Star Drivers, and can only observe what humans choose to do with the Cybodies' power. The club's cute fox mascot Vice President is also one of these alien observers. They would not be suitable as PCs under most circumstances.

Theme Story

The story starts with the Cybodies: giant semi-sentient mecha of extraterrestrial (extragalactic??) origins. The Cybodies arrived on Earth before recorded history, and presented a threat to all life on the planet because the King Cybody, Samekh, was essentially a massive ship designed to drain a planet of its living energy in order to power its flight through spacetime. This tragedy repeated itself several times before the Cybodies reached earth, where they were restrained under a series of seals which stifled their powers, leaving them as little more than inert dolls buried under ancient ruins on a small island off the coast of Japan.

The old families of the island, which came to be called Southern Cross Island, were linked to the buried Cybodies by mystical emblems passed down from generation to generation. Four such families, connected by emblems to the four Maiden Cybodies which created the seals, founded shrines and worked to ensure that the seals were maintained and the Cybodies never released into the world. The Shindo family, which possessed Samekh's mark, likewise established traditions to ensure that Samekh's immense power would never leave the island.

The remaining families - save one - formed a secret society called the Glittering Crux, with the goal of recovering and repairing the Cybodies in order to use their power to shape the world. The people who inherited Cybody emblems and the ability to channel a Cybody's power were known as Star Drivers.

By the generation before the current one, the project had grown into a large-scale conspiracy with ties to overseas financial backing and advanced scientific research. A young man named Tokio Tsunashi, though an outsider to the island, manipulated his way into the project and even persuaded not one but two potential Star Drivers to transfer their emblems to him. Changing his name to Reiji Miyabi, he assumed the role of Head, leader of one of the four major factions of Glittering Crux.

That brings us to the current generation, which is when Glittering Crux's plans got fully under way with the breaking of the North Maiden's seal, giving them access to a time-stopped alternate dimension known as Zero Time and allowing the Cybodies other than Samekh to move freely within that other-dimensional space. By fate or planning, this is also when Takuto Tsunashi - Tokio's teenage son, and the bearer of the Tau emblem passed down from his grandfather - came to Southern Cross Island to attend school and "do amazing things."

Takuto's grandfather had trained him from a young age to be the Ginga Bishonen, Star Driver of the Cybody Tauburn, and instilled in him a directive to protect the powerless. When members of the Glittering Crux brigade Filament took it on themselves to kidnap the South Maiden, Wako Agemaki, Takuto intervened, beginning a campaign of battles in Zero Time between Tauburn and the Cybodies controlled by Glittering Crux.

In the process, Takuto formed close bonds with Wako and with Sugata Shindo, bearer of Samekh's emblem. He became a member of Midnight Flight, the high school's drama club and informal resistance against Glittering Crux. He also formed friendships with many members of Glittering Crux themselves, most of whom were also teenagers attending the same school.

Over the course of a school year, Head's machinations brought Glittering Crux's plan to a critical point. Three of the Maiden seals were destroyed, releasing Samekh - at which point Head revealed his true intentions, which were to take control of Samekh himself and use its power to travel back in time, burning the rest of the world and all life on it in the process. All of the Star Drivers of Glittering Crux joined Takuto and Tauburn with their own Cybodies in the fight to stop him, and with great effort Head's control over Samekh was broken. Sugata attempted to sacrifice himself to force Samekh into dormancy, but was stopped in this by Takuto and Wako; with Wako's consent, Takuto nullified the final seal to release Samekh from Zero Time, then destroyed Samekh and rescued Sugata in the process.

With Samekh destroyed and unable to repair himself, the other full-sized Cybodies were re-sealed and Zero Time reinstated in an altered form in case any as yet unknown Cybodies or other such threats might appear from space. It was agreed that the Cybodies were still too powerful to be used as they were, but that the Drivers should go into the world and be on the lookout for an invasion that might or might not ever come.