Oh God. I semi sorta forgot how messy Arknights is.
So... it just so happens Terra was inhabited before they started terraforming it with Originium by a race called the Teekaz. These are the predecessors of the Sarkaz, the 'demon' looking race with horns and a tail. They kinda couldn't keep their shit together and warred amongst themselves all the time so got their shit mostly pushed in as all the other races came to power and are kinda the 'lower class' of Arknights races, having no homeland cause it was mostly destroyed in war. (If you are looking at it as natives being pushed out by colonizing people, you're prolly not far off. AK borrows (fucking steals) almost 1 to 1 from real life as they explored various questions and stories of our own world semi sorta in game.
The Sankta, the angels you see (who love guns) are in the neo vatican known as Laterano and follow 'The Law' which is sorta a religion/code/god all rolled into one. They even have their own Pope who looks suspiciously like Gaben from Steam. No shit. When the Sankta come of age they are gifted their Patron Firearm and are bound by The Law to never use it against another Sankta or they become fallen. A fallen Sankta starts to develop traits resembling a Sarkaz, cause its later revealed that Sankta are Sarkaz an AI meddled with during the terraforming and being rejected by The Law causes them to start immediately reverting back. Anyway... the Sankta have the halos and wings. Oh, and via their connection to The Law via the halos they all have shared empathy and literally feel the emotions of other Sankta. The Law combined with this emotional bond makes for a very chaotic but 'nice' society. With explosions for fun. In one of the recent story events 'The Law' was revealed to be a super AI trying to make the perfect society (which of course people rejected) so it'll be real interesting to see how they deal with them now in Endfield since the AI that runs their society and gene codes them isn't around...
As I said, don't think too hard or it all starts to fall apart. But.. they do a good job of exploring interesting ideas and questions via the story. Or did.
There are also actual fucking demons, ala 40k demons. They are called demons, but their proper name is 'Collapsals' and so far in AK these are mentioned and talked about but not really brought into play. Just a looming future threat that appears to cast a shadow and hint at a future problem before stepping out of the story. Oddly enough, those are supposed to linger around interplanetary gates that are located at the north and south poles of Terra and are trying to enter our reality via those gates. Same gate we apparently used to come to Talos II btw.... Hmm.
Arknights really does a 1 for 1 on a lot of the in game races with RL cultures as you may have noticed by the accents in Endfield. Generally they each related 1:1 to a Earth equivalent, though not 100%. Ursus are Russian bears, but there are Ursus that grew up outside AK Russia for instance. Same goes for all.
Anyway the races break down basically like this
Ursus = Russian Bears with semi related Russian revolution
Lupo = Italian wolves. With mafioso and mob stories.
Sankta = Vatican Angels with Techno and guns
Lung (Chinese Dragons) are Chinese (Chen is a Lung)
Aslan and Draco are lions and dragons, and they rule over Victoria and Tara, which are Britain and Ireland complete with their own IRA terrorists and war for independence.
Voivre are wyverns and have desert origins but a diaspora has them everywhere (Yvonne is a Voivre)
Columbia is a good old USA melting pot, with CIA and tech and business and shit.
and it just keeps going. Goats, Horses, Birds, Cows, etc and analogs to Germany, Poland, France/Spain, Greece, etc, respectively.
Oh. And Cthulhu sea creatures. The game follows Chinese traditions and steals liberally from everyone else as much as possible with analogs of various legends and folk tales. There are immortal creatures of various types and powers resembling various legendary beings and gods of various cultures. Its a mess to be honest and I think with Endfield they might just toss a lot of it to make it more narratively tight since it all seems to focus around the Endmin and you as the player while in Arknights a lot of the (best) stories didn't involve the main character or plot at all but instead a specific area and the problems facing it and the often differing moral and philosophical ideas on how to handle it.
Anyway. Have a picture of Pope Gaben since I rambled so much.
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