Lore speculation; what “Section ID’s” might represent?

jcorb

Member
I’ve always enjoyed piecing lore together for games, and PSO’s in particular is super interesting to me. I’d actually point to it as a great example of atmospheric world building without direct story telling.

Regardless, Section ID’s clearly only exist to “have colors”. Yet, I can’t help but draw some correlation between certain themes amongst characters that seem to have those Section ID’s.

This is obviously going to venture into head-canon territory, but I’ve come up with a few theories on what certain ID’s *could* mean. For example, perhaps they would be given to people to authorize them to visit certain areas on Ragol (or even simply what sector they work on the Pioneer 2), which I think would actually make a lot of sense.

Starting with…

Whitill - The Lab/Scientists

Something I never realized until recently is that Red Ring Rico is actually a Whitill ID. She’s known as a great Hunter, but she is ultimately a scientist. Given the official artwork for the FOmar always places him as a Whitill, himself dressed more akin to a scientist than anything, leads me to think there may be some correlation between Whitill and the Lab.

Bluefull - Black Paper

Notably, both Sue and Kireek originally used this ID, and both have it in their original artwork as well. I’m inclined to say this ID would be associated with Black Paper then.

Now, because it is shockingly hard to find high-res images of the official artwork, and also because Sega has on occasion changed the Section ID’s in those same images, it can be difficult pinning down certain other characters as well. So here are a few more loose theories…

Redria - The Hunters’ Guild(?)

Pretty weak connection, but given the HUmar is consistently shown to use Redria, and he is the de facto poster child for PSO, I’m kind of inclined to say that Redria might very broadly represent the Hunters’s Guild.

Greenill - The Military

The RAcast (Gilliam?) definitely uses this, and I *think* the RAmarl (Karen?) may use it as well. Given they both use camp as core parts of their design, I feel like it’s probably associated with the Military in some fashion.

Skyly - Police force

This one is grasping at straws for sure, but I feel like I vaguely remember Bernie implying he was some kind of retired cop or something? Official RAmar art depicts him as a Skyly, and given the constant homages to Burning Rangers, I would maybe draw some similarity there.

Pinkal - Photon experiments?

Rupika (the FOnewearl template) is the only character I know that uses this in her artwork, though the ID itself is known to favor Forces quite heavily. I was never quite sure what her story was supposed to be, given how abruptly it seemed to end in the original game (apparently she appears in Episode 4?), but it sure seemed to be that she was being experimented on in some capacity, which presumably fell in line with her being an extremely powerful Force.

Beyond that, though, we’ve only really got the HUcaseal, whose artwork I *believe* is Oran? Surprisingly, she is the only class in the game not represented by an actual character. I personally think she was meant to be a retcon to Shino, which would have fit perfectly — although I would have hoped she had a less tragic end (same for our boy, Bernie).

Then you’ve got FOnewm/Montague who is firmly shown to be Yellowboze, but no real indication what that might be. Given he seems to be self-motivated (as opposed to serving the Lab), perhaps Yellowboze would represent more of a free market capitalist sort of character? It does generate extra meseta, after all.

That’s all obviously pretty sketchy logic, but even if those were correct, it still leaves Purplenum without any reasonable explanation (only character being FOmarl/Alicia), the RAcaseal whose ID I can’t make out in the artwork, and then Viridia, who to my knowledge isn’t represented by a single character in official artwork.

Funny enough, though, I remember the very first time ever seeing PSO, it was the default HUmar with the Viridia ID. Because of that, I’ve always sort of see it as the “default” ID, which really makes no sense, but I honestly don’t know what it would be.

In any case, I just really enjoy spitballing theories on what the lord could mean, so just kinda curious what any of you guys think? Does this spur any such ideas of your own? Maybe connections you e made that I’ve overlooked?
 
My guess was always that the Section ID was just used to represent where on their respective Pioneer a particular person was assigned to live given how Hunters can have so many different ones, sort of like habitation blocks or something, but I will say the profession/workplace idea had occurred to me but since a hunter can have any ID the idea sort of lost favor with me, but the mention of Rico being both a Hunter and Scientist was something I had overlooked and it could be like you said and that ID has to do with their profession outside of being a Hunter.
 
I just think section IDs were a thing SEGA added to make the game pseudo-personalized, probably not much to them… lore wise unfortunately…. Also it’s a way for SEGA to create more content where there was none. They essentially 10x’d the amount of content by adding them… 120x’d if you wanna really complete it fully. (Don’t talk to me until you have all 120 characters… BRO)

This had me thinking the other day though… what if they doubled down on this concept? Yup you know where I’m going with this. What if there was like 256 Section ID colors instead? With the charts just randomized each time there would probably be like a “perfect” ID for every area and every viable rare, lol.
 
My guess was always that the Section ID was just used to represent where on their respective Pioneer a particular person was assigned to live given how Hunters can have so many different ones, sort of like habitation blocks or something, but I will say the profession/workplace idea had occurred to me but since a hunter can have any ID the idea sort of lost favor with me, but the mention of Rico being both a Hunter and Scientist was something I had overlooked and it could be like you said and that ID has to do with their profession outside of being a Hunter.
Yeah, I doubt there is some super deep explanation, but it’s honestly kind of fun to think about. I love world-building, so I can’t help but wonder; what COULD each section ID represent?

Curious if any other folks have given it any thought?
 
We reused them in our PSO2:NGS Roleplay community to mean company logos for various organizations in our own community's lore. Whitil being part of a huge cybernetics corporation that makes CAST parts and bodies, and Bluefull being my own character's family crest and a side logo to a photon motor engine/reactor company. We got stickers for each ID (but blackill as it only existed in cutting room floor of EP 3: CARD REVOLUTION) with past PSO 1 anniversary stuff and used them for our own purposes.

As for PSO itself, what the OP said seems to fit best given we came to the same conclusion for Whitill in our RPs.
 
Random speculations based on OP's format based on nothing in particular
Pruplenum: MPs/secret police force. The guys the Principal government dispatches when they want dudes filled with Photons off the books.

Yellowboze: Enforcers for the various financial/banking clans on Pioneer. The guys who'll break some kneecaps to settle some debts.

Oran: Assassin's Guild types. The people to call when somebody needs to disappear without any kind of authorities being able to track the perpetrators

I'm at a loss on Viridia too. Shots/Partisans is such a weird combination.
 
Viridia - Hippies
Greenill - Stoners
Skyly - Clouds
Bluefull - Fish
Purplenum - Weirdo gun enthusiasts with fallout bunkers and shelters with canned goods but no beds
Pinkal - LGBTQIA2S+
Redria - Sports!
Oran - Mall goths (they grow up to sell knives for an MLM)
Yellowboze - The 1%
Whitill - Lmao
 
Hmm, I kinda dig Yellowboze being something to do with bankers, or maybe just the financial sector in general? In fact, that sort of aligns with the idea of a Section ID basically informing which “section” of the Pioneer you would be associated with in some way.

Purplenum… yeah, I actually can’t think of a character who uses it canonically, or in their artwork? At the very least, I think HUcaseal uses Oran in her artwork. Same with Viridia. Makes it interesting to think what those even COULD be. Any thoughts where you guys think they would fit into the overall lore of PSO?
 
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